Transformers power sales too!

HYDERABAD: 'Business before safety' seems to the motto of hawkers in the bustling market of Pathergatti. In what could be a hazard waiting to happen, hawkers have thrown safety regulations prescribed by the electricity department to the winds and continue to conduct their business using transformers as stands to display their wares dangerously close to live electricity cables.
Traders and shoppers have blown a fuse and complain that the callous usage of three transformers of 150 KVA, 500 KVA and 315 KVA capacities along Pathergatti road by hawkers could threaten the entire area. With the summers approaching, residents, shoppers and traders fear that the hawkers' obtuse attitudes can precipitate a major fire. They have also complained of the hawker's unauthorised connections being drawn from transformers. Shailendra Kumar from Hyderabad Perfumers in Pathergatti has blown a fuse and says, "We are sitting on a ball of fire. The transformers break down frequently with a loud bang. With the hawkers using them, a disaster could happen anytime. The situation during Ramzan gets worse because of the additional power the market uses. The electricity department had promised to lay underground cables in view of safety of the traders and residents but nothing has been done so far."
The 500 KVA transformer is only a few feet from a Standard fireworks shop in Pathergatti. Hawkers themselves admit that using transformers to display their wares near this shop could be dangerous but continue because they have nowhere else to go. Fifty-year-old Maqsood Ahmed is a hawker who sells clothes near Shahran Hotel. "Hanging trousers and shirts on this transformer is the only way I can display my wares and attract customers. After all, I have to feed a family of six," he says. Maqsood says that sometimes officials from GHMC and the electricity board ask him and other hawkers to stop using the electricity transformer as display units for his wares, but after a day or two they return to their places of business.
A hawker was injured after a short circuit in a transformer in the area only two years ago. But this too doesn't seem to wake them up. They say that they have got used to such incidents.
Assistant engineer, APSEB, KV Naidu says, "We tried to move the hawkers away from the transformers many times but our efforts are undermined by political pressure. They invariably approach a corporator or an MLA or an MP who puts an end to our drive. We even threatened to cut power supply to their makeshift shops but this has had no effect on them."