Chennai: Residents of the city’s western suburbs, including Valasaravakkam and Porur, have been enduring power cuts lasting up to five hours, disrupting sleep and leaving students, office-goers and families struggling with heat and mosquitoes.On Thursday night, several neighbourhoods had no power from around 10.30pm to 3.30am, despite repeated assurances that supply would be restored shortly. S Easwaran, secretary of Jyothi Nagar residents’ welfare association, said he contacted the assistant engineer of Tamil Nadu Power Distribution Corporation Ltd (TNPDCL), Porur division, soon after the outage began. “He told me that power would be restored by 11pm, but after a while his phone was switched off. I then called ‘Minnagam’ to register a complaint. They kept saying power would be restored within 30 minutes, but it took nearly five hours,” he said.S Geetha, a resident of Janakiraman Street in Porur, said she spent much of Thursday night manually fanning her children aged two and five. “Not everyone can afford an inverter. We endure power cuts during the day too, mostly between 2pm and 4.30pm. We did not face such issues in this area until Aug. If this continues, residents’ associations across the western suburbs may have to organise a large-scale protest,” she said.P Sukumaran, a social activist, said, “Over the past few weeks, several children in the neighbourhood have been suffering from fever, and a few dengue cases have been reported too. Prolonged power cuts make the situation worse.” He also said, “No prior alerts about maintenance-related interruptions are given to residents; the electricity board should take the issue seriously and come up with a solution.”Despite several attempts, TNPDCL superintendent engineer, Chennai south, did not respond to TOI.
