Andheri subscribers cry, "Mera Telephone Nahin Lagta"

The telephone of Fakira, a cine-artiste living in a building in Model Town just behind the exchange has been dead since the last one month, and he has personally complained about it every day. “I am told that the problem would be rectified soon, but obviously nothing has been done. I am lucky to have a cellular phone, but it’s extremely expensive to use for numerous routine calls that I have to make daily,” he said. Fakira was just one of the hundred-odd subscribers with some or the other complaint who had queued up at the exchange today.

But unlike Fakira, many of the complainants were not taking things lying down. “You chaps get your salaries out of the bills that we pay. I am thoroughly fed up of your stupid replies. I will haul MTNL to the consumer court,” yelled Shamim Khan, a resident of Yari Road. Perplexed at the sudden verbal onslaught from the rather awe-inspiring figure, the clerk could only stare in disbelief as Shamim grabbed the complaint register and tore it into two.

According to the Versova exchange Deputy General Manager, Harcharan Singh, the problems will last for a few more days as the exchange is still being streamlined to its full effiency. “The entire operations of the new exchange were being carried out by the Andheri exchange and about 40,000 individual telephone lines have been shifted to Versova. What we are having are expected problems in the transfer of lines,” Singh said.

He added that the transfer of lines began last year in batches and his office has received fewer complaints since December 26, when the last batch of 12,000 lines was transferred. “We have also had some technical problems at the exchange, but things are being sorted out,” he said.

However, according to sources, the work of laying new cables at the exchange which was expected to be completed before monsoon, is still incomplete. Thirty cables, each consisting of 2,000 telephone lines have been already laid at the new exchange, and problems are likely during the connection of individual lines to the exchange. “Wrong connection of even a single wire could make entire operations go haywire,” sources maintained. They denied that the problems for the subscribers arose due to cable fault, as that said an MTNL source, would have affected lines only in a localised area.