Residents of Nyangassang community in Calabar, the Cross River State capital, have lamented power outage in the area, which coincided with seven years of a tragic electrocution that claimed several lives.
They lamented that the outage has grounded commercial and economic activities in Nyangassang, located at Calabar Municipal Local Council of the state.
Consequently, the residents called for urgent government intervention.
They attributed the problem to disconnection of the transformer supplying electricity to households in the area by the Calabar zonal office of the Port Harcourt Electricity Distribution Company (PHED).
Accusing PHED of disconnecting them from the national grid, a community leader in the area, Chief Baron Eyo, said: “We started experiencing abnormal voltage around March.
Sometimes, it will go up to 280kva, instead of the normal ratio of 180-220kva, then drop as low as 80kva in one swoop. Findings revealed that the neural phase from the transformer was burnt and needed to be fixed.
“We called the Zonal Manager of PHED, one Mr Gabriel, and notified him of the issue. He promised to address it immediately. Each time we called further to remind him, he kept saying the maintenance team was on its way.
“We mobilised ourselves to provide necessary logistic support to the maintenance team to fast-track the repairs but the wait was in vain. They never showed up. “When they finally came, they disconnected us completely from the national grid. This is the height of insensitivity because exactly seven years ago, 20 residents of this area were electrocuted due to carelessness, negligence and professional incompetency of PHED.”
But a staff of PHED, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said: “Our major problem is the fact that for several years now, our headquarters in Port Harcourt keeps sending professional bankers as Zonal Managers.
“These former bankers lack basic elementary knowledge in electricity. Once you report faults, they hardly act. Their priority is revenue generation.
“We have other transformers close by that could have shared the load to avert the perennial explosions from this transformer popularly called ‘first transformer’, especially after the electrocution tragedy. But nothing has been done. Let’s hope we are not courting another tragedy.”
When contacted, the Zonal Manager, PHED, Gabriel Modupe, referred reporters to the Technical Manager, Tom Udofia, who at press time had not replied to calls or messages sent to his phone.
