8-hr power cut at Sangrur Civil Hospital leaves patients harried

Parvesh Sharma

Sangrur, September 11

Patients at Sangrur Civil Hospital were a harried lot on Sunday due to an 8-hour long power cut. Despite having a hotline connection, repeated power outages has remained a major concern here.

As per sources, the internal wiring of hospital and other electricity system has not been updated for the past 35 years, but the demand inside the hospital has increased manifold. The Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL) authorities said the internal management of power supply lies with hospital authorities.

“On Sunday, there was no electricity for 8 hours in hospital. Dengue and other patients were hit hard due to the outage. It seems that no one is bothered about the issue,” said Kultar Singh, a patient sitting in hospital.

During an inspection of hospital electricity system by senior officials of the Health and PWD Departments on August 22, it came to light that there is no battery bank for HT feeder and charger. The transformer was not maintained properly and LT main panel, CT flour panel, sub-penals in OPD and X-Ray Departments were also in a bad shape.

“The PSPCL is responsible for the supply of electricity till the meter of hospital. The internal system has not been updated for many years. The PSPCL is being blamed wrongly as the internal management is the responsibility of hospital authorities,” said Varinder Deepak Goyal, Executive Engineer, PSPCL, Sangrur.

As per sources, many new facilities such as mother-child healthcare building, lab, MRI centre, de-addiction centre, effluent treatment plant and oxygen plant have been added in hospital. These new facilities have increased the load over old electricity system of the hospital.

“The state government has sanctioned Rs 48 lakh and soon all internal wiring and other equipment would be replaced to prevent any problem in the supply of electricity in hospital” said Dr Kirpal Singh, Senior Medical Officer, Sangrur.