Chennai: Angry residents, woken up by an unscheduled power cut in the middle of the night, staged a road blockade on Paper Mills Road in Perambur, under Kolathur assembly constituency, early on Saturday. The power outage in DD Thottam and surrounding areas lasted more than two hours. The protestors, who had gathered around 3.30am, dispersed after police and TNPDCL officials assured them that power supply would be restored.The disruption came amid reports of power cuts in parts of Chennai between 6pm on Friday and 6am on Saturday. Parts of Taramani suffered a power shutdown between 9am and 2pm on Friday. Nammalvarpettai, Perambur, SK Nagar, Ayyapakkam, Chintadripet, Puzhal and Anna Salai faced outages lasting more than two hours. Areas in Avadi, Adyar, Melur and Pudupet faced disruptions of around 15 minutes.DD Thottam residents said power supply was disrupted from around 1am on Saturday in their area. Around 30 people gathered and blocked the road around 3.45am in front of the Electricity Board office on Paper Mills Road.Night patrol personnel, including inspector Anandakumar and sub-inspector Murugesan, reached the spot and held talks with the residents. Electricity Board assistant engineer Niroshaa assured them that steps would be taken to restore the supply. The residents then dispersed and traffic movement resumed.TNPDCL officials attributed the outages to faults in feeder cable lines, rectification work and insulator replacement work.Residents said repeated night-time outages had affected daily life, particularly in North Chennai. R K Ragul, a resident, said parts of Vyasarpadi had faced power cuts lasting more than three hours the previous week. He said residents of Selaivayal also experienced an outage lasting more than two hours from 10.30pm on Friday.C Raghukumar, convener of Perambur Neighbourhood Development Forum, blamed the outages on the damage to underground electricity cables during stormwater drain work on Perambur High Road. He said residents had brought the issue to the attention of officials, who assured them that the damaged lines would be restored. Raghukumar raised concerns over a lack of coordination between civic authorities and TNPDCL. He said the work had damaged streetlight cables in some areas as well.
