No power also means no water

JUlY 26: Over 6.5 lakh residents of Chikanghar, Radhanagar, Godrej Park and Hill, Adharwadi and Kasturigram in Kalyan who have been withou...

JUlY 26: Over 6.5 lakh residents of Chikanghar, Radhanagar, Godrej Park and Hill, Adharwadi and Kasturigram in Kalyan who have been without power since Tuesday, when overzealous MSEB workers switched off power, have had to go without water too.

“As there is no power, there is no way water can be pumped from the ground storage reservoir in our building to the overhead tank on the terrace,” said Dina Shah, a housewife from Radha Nagar who lives on the fourth floor. “How much water can we lug around manually in spite of lifts?” she asked, wondering how MSEB workers would get public sympathy by adopting such measures. In almost all these suburbs, housing societies have their own pumping stations built atop GSRs on which they depend for water. In chawls and slums too most residents have to use booster pumps to get their daily fill.

The situation has been similar in Ulhasnagar, Ambernath and Badlapur. Curiously, power hasn’t even blinked in MSEB staff colonies in these places and housing societies in the neighborhood, making people wonder why. “The strike will not last forever. If we go around disturbing power supply to our own colony, where even our bosses stay, we will get into trouble,” admitted a union member from Kalyan.

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Forget attending to complaints, the workers didn’t seem to be in any mood to entertain any. Most phones where consumers can make complaints have been disconnected or removed. At the Murbad Road MSEB complaint centre that handles at least seven square kms of an area, residents who personally made it there were flummoxed to find only a security guard. “I cannot take complaints. I am only here for security,” he said, adding, “workers and linemen are on strike. We can’t tell you what the problem is or when power supply will be resumed.”

Irate residents’ groups have threatened to take to the streets if power supply is not restored soon.

In Bhiwandi (always in the news for power theft), apart from short localised disruptions due to technical faults, power supply largely remained unaffected.