More than 200 air conditioners have been removed from offices of various ministries at Shastri Bhawan following an expose
More than 200 air conditioners have been removed from offices of various ministries at Shastri Bhawan following an expose
Ministries and government departments have started feeling the heat. After regular power cuts it's time to lose the air conditioners. Due to excess consumption of power and illegal air conditioners installed at Krishi Bhawan, the NDMC has started disconnecting power supply to such Air conditioners.
Too hot to handle: More than 500 ACs were running in contravention
of rules at offices of various ministries, leading to severe power
disruptions. The NDMC has finally initiated action against the errant
bureaucrats. Pic/Rajeev Tyagi
With the usage of air conditioners going up at government offices in the New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) area, ministry and government agencies were facing power cuts. Starting from 9:30 am each wing has started seeing outages of 90 minutes till 6 pm to bring the mounting power crisis in the city under control. A circular has been sent to all departments at Shastri Bhawan and Krishi Bhawan giving out the schedule of the load shedding.
For the last one week due to cable faults in NDMC lines, power supply was affected. NDMC has put a restriction on drawing excess power. Hence government ministries and departments were carrying out load shedding.
"We have asked all the ministries to keep a check on electricity consumption as the consumption has increased many fold. We are already overloaded and can't supply power to all," said an NDMC officer of the area.
After the cable disturbance in the area there has been acute power shortage. "The power supply at Krishi Bhawan had gone upto 2500 kilowatt and the power consumption in the NDMC area has increased tremendously in recent times and we are being asked to conserve energy by regular power cuts.
The problem is more severe during summers due to excessive use of air conditioners. The gap between supply and demand of power is widening. The power load at all departments is too much. From last Thursday power supply to 200 air conditioners has been disconnected so that we could save some electricity. After doing this we have managed to bring down consumption level to 1800 kilowatt," said one of the officials looking after electricity requirements, in the area requesting anonymity.
MiD DAY had earlier reported how air conditioners are being misused at ministries. Babus in the department of revenue, ministry of power, ministry of petroleum and ministry of human resource development are chilling out with 682 air conditioners installed.
Interestingly, more than 545 of these are running in contravention of the rules set by the Directorate of Estate, ministry of urban development. The department is responsible for the administration and management of the office buildings of various government departments.
According to rules, officers only of the rank of joint secretary and above are entitled to get an air-conditioned office. Most of these facilities are situated in the North Block, Shram Shakti Bhawan and Shastri Bhawan.
9 hoursu00a0Length of outages at some govt departments every day
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