A village in lahunipada block of Sundargarh district has no electricity for last six months owing to a defunct transformer. About eighty tribal families are languishing due to the apathy of the authorities.
Majority of the villagers being under BPl line category, they are being neglected by the electricity officials, it is alleged.
Sources said the tribal village Babehudi under Sankhposh gram panchayat had been provided electricity connection in 2012. Majority of the families being tribals and belonging to BPl category, they had got the electricity connection to their houses under a Government scheme.
Sources said the BPl customers are required to pay Rs 85 towards monthly electricity charges. But, according to the villagers, the electricity officials have not yet raised electricity bill, even for once till now, even though they are interested to pay that amount.
According to the villagers, their electricity supply was interrupted in April, following a breakdown in the transformer. Since then the village is in darkness. The villagers although have been running from pillar to post to restore electricity connection, the officials have been avoiding them.
According to sources, about four years back, the transformer was damaged and for repairing the same, the villagers had paid about Rs 20,000 by collecting from the villagers, after which the repairing was done.
The electricity officials, when contacted, claimed that unavailability of transformer is the main reason of delay to restore electricity to the village.
“We require about 20 16 KV transformers in Bonei sub division alone, but we are short of them for which we have not been able to install one in Babehudi,” said Wesco Executive Engineer Bikram Singh.