Faisalabad’s economy is based on huge numbers of small and medium sized units where 1.5 million people are employed. PHOTO: AFP
“People will storm the roads if unscheduled and forced electricity load-shedding isn’t stopped,” said president of the Faisalabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry Mian Zahid Aslam on Friday.
He called unscheduled power outages anti-business as according to estimates energy crisis has bitten off 2-3% annually of the gross domestic product apart from increasing unemployment and making export targets unachievable.
Uninterrupted supply and reasonably priced electricity is vital for the industrial and economic growth of the country. Consumers in Pakistan pay higher tariffs already compared to other economies in the region.
Faisalabad’s economy is based on huge numbers of small and medium sized units where 1.5 million people are employed.
The textile hub of the country is being supplied 600 megawatts (MW) against demand of 2,000MW. Thus, longer hours of power outages have forced the majority of the 1.5-million work-force to be unemployed.
“Neither the previous government nor the caretaker government has been able to resolve the energy crisis,” said Aslam.
The root of the energy crisis was not the power shortfall per se but the mismanagement in the power sector.
He said that severe, forced and unscheduled load-shedding to the industries had halted their production resulting into delays in export shipment as well as to meet the domestic demand which usually increases with the beginning of summer season.
He said that time is of the essence and urged the caretaker government to come up with immediate steps for uninterrupted electricity supply to the industries in the area where the situation is spiralling out of control.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 18th, 2013.
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Each city should have its own power generation locally. This will reduce the distribution losses and the mysterious heavy line losses. If the policy of supply of energy from long distances continues then this is not going to bring any good.