Ludhiana, April 12 -- Ahead of the peak summer season, substation workers of Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL) are sounding alarms over the growing struggle to maintain power supply amid a crippling staff shortage.

Workers say the crisis stems from cadre restructuring orders in 2019 and 2022, which slashed manpower across substations in Ludhiana. As a result, some substations are being handled by a single worker. This slows response time during outages and puts both safety and power reliability at risk.

Ashok Kumar, a member of the Grid Maintenance Sangharsh Committee, said, "Earlier, there were around eight to nine staff members for substation operations, including three substation assistants, a junior engineer, four teamm...