CESC to bring in new Mobile App to help reduce electricity related accidents

Kolkata, 30 May (HS): In order to help reducing the growing number of electrical short circuits and other power related accidents in many households and offices in and around Kolkata almost on daily basis, the CESC Limited has decided to launch a new mobile App next month to provide its customers the opportunity of getting an instant solution to get rid of such problems in hassle free manners.

Informing this Anjan Mitra, General  Manager of this city based fully integrated power utility company  – (CESC Limited) told Hindusthan Samachar here today that on an average about 400 people were being affected by various kinds of electrical accidents in this City of Joy every year, and nearly half of them died because of such mishaps causing concern to everybody.

In order to provide an instant solution to get rid of such mishaps and loss of life,the CESC Limited along with a number of  other preventive measures had now decided to install a first of its kind mobile application from next month (June 2019) to help its millions of consumers in and around the city to find a useful way to prevent such accidents in future.

Though still the entire process was in preliminary stages, it was decided to create the new app in such a way that it would be able to guide the affected consumers,who had already experienced electrical short circuits in their metre boxes or in any of the electrical installation of their house or in office, about how to take the first  and immediate preventive steps by himself or herself before the arrival of a trained electrician to handle the emergency situation.

The new app which would be divided in three stages, would first inform its users about the techniques of how to take the emergency measures before providing them ,in the second stage, the full address and phone numbers of several  ‘fully trained’ and CESC registered electricians in nearby locations so that one of them could come and attend the faults at the earliest by using the GPS enabled Google map option, while in third stage necessary information would be provided about the technicians charges and  all other related expenses.

Before formally launching the new app  within the next couple of weeks by CESC  last minute efforts  were now being made to make it a very much user friendly, so that even a  housewife with not much knowledge about  mobile app could also register herself in the system  and use them as and when required, Mitra said and hoped that  when introduced it would open a new vista in preventing and reducing the number of electric related accidents in the city and its outskirts.

‘If successful we hope other power utility service providers elsewhere in the country would also introduce them for their own consumers’, he said.      .

Earlier, participating in an interactive session on creating nationwide awareness of electrical safety at home and workplaces,organised under the aegis of International Copper Association of India, where a number of power related experts from CESC, the Central Electricity Authority and the International Copper Association expressed their views on how to deal with the situation to prevent loss of innocent lives and property, worth hundreds of crores of rupees every year.

India had, recently, seen alarmingly growing number of incidents of electrical accidents, they pointed out and blamed the negligence related to safe electrical practices, and use of  undersized and inferior quality wires in improper and weak installations as the prime reasons for such accidents.

Though the government had created enough law and regulations to minimize such accidents, the presence of large number of dubious and vested interest  had been creating hurdles for their proper implementations, the experts observed.