Pune: Puneites expressed their anguish and grievances on microblogging platform Twitter on Thursday as several areas in the city faced power cuts for hours amidst the rains and thundering activity. Power cuts, along with the constant issue of call drops and bad internet connectivity are leading to stress amongst working professionals who continue to work from home amidst the lockdown.
Most people expressed their frustration on Twitter over not being able to complete their work due to the power outage.
A resident of Pimpri, Sunil Topwani, posted on Twitter saying that there is always an issue of power failure in his area. "There should be proper information to be given in advance. Very poor service," he stated.
When contacted, MSEDCL spokesperson Nishikant Raut said that earlier on Thursday, the power had been cut for carrying out maintenance activities.
"We have to get going with our maintenance activities, as monsoon is not far. Last year, due to excessive rainfall, there were cases of trees and branches falling over electricity lines and transformers disrupting power supply. We had informed about the power cut that happened early in the day in several parts. However, there were uninformed power cuts when it started raining heavily in the evening, and our teams did their best to handle the situation," Raut said.
Connectivity woes
Several professionals are also facing the issue of internet connectivity, including complaints of call dropping and disconnected internet.
IT Professional and resident of Camp (Golibaar Maidan) Niraj Punmia said, "I have a BSNL broadband connection, but the network connectivity is very bad and it malfunctions every hour. It becomes difficult to work from home as we also conduct video meetings with clients. It is very embarrassing because a lot of times my network disconnects on its own while I'm presenting in front of a client. Even during our internal meetings, we all face issues like these that impact our work."
He said that while working, he has to continuously switch between the wifi to mobile data hotspot. "I have filed a complaint with BSNL as well regarding the internet issue but nothing happened," he added.
Manisha Kasture, lawyer and resident of Wanawadi, said that with the Idea network, she could not make a single call without getting dropped and even the internet is also not working well.
"The internet is so bad that we are not even able to access mails. I need to download document files which do not require much data, even then I get a message that I have consumed 2GB data. It becomes very frustrating to work from home. Sometimes, I put documents on download during the night as the internet is better. But all these things lead to stress and hamper my work as I am unable to join the webinars due to the lack of connectivity," Kasture added.
Several Vodafone users in different parts of Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad area too have complained of similar issues; however, despite complaining, their grievances were not addressed.
Although contacted, several telecom service providers did not provide a statement on the issue.