Chennai
oi-Prakash KL
Consumers in Chennai are complaining about unannounced power cuts and the biggest concern is that they are not able to lodge formal complaints, according to a report in DT Next.
Over the past few days, dozens of consumers tried to report outages and electrical hazards. Their calls to local TNPDCL engineers and the dedicated Fuse of Call (FOC) centres are not going through.
Chennai consumers face unannounced power cuts and are unable to report outages as TNPDCL’s FOC and approximately 3,000 CUG phone numbers are disconnected due to telecom provider issues with Airtel.
According to the report, callers instead heard an automated message saying the numbers they were dialling could not receive incoming calls.
T. Sadagopan, who heads the Tamil Nadu Progressive Consumer Centre, has been trying since Sunday evening to reach engineers in the Avadi area. He said, “I tried five or six officials’ numbers, but none of them is working. How can the utility have its CUG numbers not working? How will consumers contact officials?”
He pointed out that the FOC centres are usually the fallback option when field staff cannot be reached. “All the FOC numbers were also disconnected. It is totally unacceptable,” he said.
The TNPDCL officials are pointing fingers at a telecom provider. According to them, nearly 3,000 official CUG connections on the network were abruptly cut off.
“Nearly 3,000 CUG numbers on Airtel were disconnected. Airtel did not match the offer made by Jio and BSNL. We had asked officials to migrate for the last six months. Some of them did not act, which led to the present crisis, while most migrated through mobile number portability,” the publication quoted a senior official as stating.
Those who could not complete the porting process, the utility has now instructed them to get new numbers altogether. Those fresh contact details, the official assured, will be published in the telephone directory and shared on social media, he added.
