Protests against power outages continue

Industrialists vow countrywide protests if situation does not improve.

FAISALABAD:

Protests against electricity load shedding in the city poured into the second day on Wednesday. More than 100 industrialists and power loom workers took to the streets.

The protesters staged a demonstration in front of the Faisalabad Electric Supply Company (Fesco) office.

They expressed anguish and resentment over extended load shedding hours and increase in power tariff in the name of fuel adjustments charge.

The demonstration was led by Waheed Ramay, the Council of Loom Owners Association chairman. The protesters also blocked the Rakh Bank Canal Road causing a traffic jam that lasted more than four hours.

The protesters chanted slogans against Fesco and the government and condemned the hike in unit cost of electricity. They said that frequent outages were causing them huge losses.

“Our units are operating a hardly 25 per cent of their capacity, but we have to pay the wages and bear other costs. The treasury must be overflowing with the taxes and levies that we pay, but we got no relief from the government,” Muhammad Hanif, a leading industrialist of the city, said.

He said if workers were suffering, so were the industrialists. “We are sustaining huge losses for the last three years. It has become almost impossible to keep operating the units,” he added.

Later, Fesco General Manager Ghazanfar Ali Khan Baloch, invited a delegation of the protesting industrialists to his office. He told the delegation that Fesco was a distribution company and that they had no say in decisions about the supply. An official who attended the meeting said that the general manager had told the industrialists that Fesco was receiving 600 MW of electricity against the demand of 1,250 MW. He, however, assured the delegates that the issue would be conveyed to the concerned agency.

Industrialist Waheed Ramay told The Express Tribune that the industrialists had decided to hold a meeting of stakeholders in the next week where they would decide their further line of action. He said they would also decide if they should hold countrywide protests against the load shedding, high power prices and unreasonable levies.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 22^nd, 2012.