Gaighat, July 30:

Six years have passed since electric poles were installed and one year since power cable was laid in Hadiya VDC’s Wards No 6, 7 and 8 of Udayapur district, but electrification of the village is still a dream.

Locals claim that work on the extension of transmission line was delayed due to apathy of the part of the Nepal Electricity Authority’s Udayapur office and the office of eighth electrification project Biratnagar.

Shambhu Pokhrel of Hadiya said locals have not been able to have CDMA and mobile phone services because of delay in electrification of the village. Snakebites are frequent in summer here. Medicines for snakebite have to be stored in fridges to prevent damages. Thanks to the lack of electricity, locals have been forced to rely on medicines that might have lost effectivity.

An agreement reached between Udayapur NEA office and Biratnagar-based eighth electrification project states that the latter would install electric poles, transformer and extend transmission line, while the NEA would carry out rest of the work. But transformer has not been installed yet. The NEA office has been urged to speed up the work, but it has maintained that the project is responsible for all works, said a local Asha Ram Chaudhary.

Coordinator of the eighth electrification project Ranjan Chalise said installing transformer is the only task of his office, adding that the task would be accomplished by mid-August.

NEA branch head in Udayapur Shyam Prakash Singh said efforts are on to extend transmission line to the village.