Click to play videoHyderabad: Farmers in Andhra Pradesh have been getting their promised seven hours of daily power supply. However, for the rest of the state, it is a tough battle sweating it out without electricity.
Hydel reservoirs in the state have run dry because of a bad monsoon.
K Rajender Reddy lives in Mehdipatnam in Hyderabad with his parents, wife and two children. Officially, load shedding means he gets no power from 4 PM to 6 Pm every evening. But in practice, lights go off in half an hour intervals through the day.
“Between 4 pm and 6 pm my wife sits with the kids to make them do their homework. Because there's no power, it's very difficult to make the kids sit down with no fans or air conditioners. When the power is back, my wife finds it very difficult to manage cooking and taking care of the kids,” says Resident of Mehdipatnam, K Rajender Reddy.
Reddy also runs a spinning mill in Eluru in the West Godavari district. Here the government has announced a seven-hour power cut every day, which extends by another four-hours of darkness.
“I have to spend Rs 1.5 to Rs 2 lakh every single day to arrange for alternate power for my mill. I am incurring huge losses because of the power cuts,” says K Rajender.
A bad monsoon has meant reservoirs in the state are near empty, which means there would be no hydroelectric power. The state has been told that there is no extra power available in the Central pool. And with neighbouring Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Kerala experiencing power shortages themselves, there's no hope of an immediate solution.
"Only the rains can save us because we've had a shortage of 1,900 MW of hydro-electric power,” says Energy Minister, AP, Mohd Ali Shabbir.
Although farmers have been assured their seven hours of low voltage power supply despite the power crisis, but for the rest of the state, there appears to be, literally, no light at the end of the tunnel.
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