More gas outages for industries

Crisis hurting exports as buyers lose confidence in exporters: industrialist.

FAISALABAD:

The Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL) has issued a new gas shutdown schedule for three days starting Wednesday morning to Friday.

Associations of various textile and allied sectors claimed that about 600 industrial and manufacturing units would be affected by this new schedule. They refused to abide by the outage plan and would continue operating their units for the first two days and comply with the plan only on Friday.

The Pakistan Hosiery Manufacturers and Exporters Association (PHMA) North Zone chairman in a statement claimed that further gas outages would prove disastrous for the textile industry and export sector, leaving many unemployed. He pointed out that gas outages, which had continued for the last eight months in conjunction with power shortages, had forced a large number of industries and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to shut down.

According to the chairman, the buyers were also losing confidence in Pakistani exports, as exporters were unable to ship orders on time. He demanded that the government should come up with a solution to tackle this problem.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 28^th, 2011.