Power offices go without water as MC snaps supply

Ramkrishan Upadhyay

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, May 30

Employees working in offices of the Electricity Department are without water for the past 10 days as the public heath wing of the Municipal Corporation has snapped the water connection over non-payment of water bills.

The situation has turned so serious that employees were forced to come out of their offices today and hold a protest outside the electricity office in Sector 23. Gopal Dutt Joshi, general secretary of the UT Powermen Union, who led the protest, said there was no water in the Sector 22, 23 and 24 offices of the Electricity Department.

Satpal, president of the union, said besides the employees, those visiting the offices were also facing inconvenience due to the problem. Joshi said the toilets were stinking. Employees had no option but to buy bottles of drinking water from the market. A woman employee said it was a nightmare to sit in the office put up with the foul smell.

Sources said water bills, running into lakhs of rupees, were due for over two years and the Electricity Department had failed to pay these. Joshi said the employees had also met the Executive Engineer regarding the issue, but nothing came out of it.

Interestingly the public health wing of the MC has snapped the water connection at a time when many of its offices also figure in the list of defaulters of the Electricity Department. Sources said these offices owed over Rs 20 lakh to the Electricity Department, but it was still going soft on these and was yet to disconnect their electricity supply. MP Singh, Superintending Engineer of the Electricity Department, said he would look into the matter and necessary instructions would be issued to the officers concerned to sort out the problem.