The decision was taken at a joint meeting of the associations of the six industrial zones of Karachi, which took place at Korangi Association of Trade & Industry (KATI) on Saturday.
Chairmen of SITE Association of Industry, North Karachi Association of Trade & Industry, Federal B. Area Association of Trade & Industry, Landhi Association of Trade & Industry, Korangi Association of Trade & Industry, and SITE Super Highway Association of Trade & Industry represented their associations at the meeting besides others.
“Industrial zones are facing 12-hour long power outage every day, which means no production at all. Labour intensive industries, which run 24-hour a day like textiles, are incurring 50 per production losses every day,” Syed Johar Kandhari, chairman, KATI.
The power cuts were causing about Rs8.5 billion losses to the industries and national exchequer, cumulatively, every day, he added.
Salim Parekh, former chairman of SITE Association of Industry, said, “If the shutdown fails to get uninterrupted power supply restored to the industrial zones, we would opt for closing industries for undefined period, as industries are already not working under the provided circumstances.
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“The factory closures would save us something, rather than incurring financial losses and losing credibility before international clients owing to this electricity phenomenon,” he said.
The decision of shutdown was taken with the full support of Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce & Industry, said Kandhari.
The Karachi Chamber of Commerce & Industry (KCCI) was not taken into confidence before taking such decision, said Muhammad Saeed Shafiq, President of KCCI. The power and gas load shedding were, however, industrialists’ issues and KCCI was also striving to get these issues resolved from Chamber’s platform, he added.
Kandhari said that the industrialists have nothing to do with on going issues between KESC and Sui Southern Gas Company.
“We want electricity round the clock as we pay all utilities bills on time.” He demanded of the KESC to run its power generation system on furnace oil if it was facing lower supply of gas
“We request prime minister and president to intervene and ask KESC to restore electricity to the all of the industrial zones for 24-hour a day.”
Faraz Mirza, Chairman of North Karachi Association of Trade & Industry, said that his zone was suffering a four-hour power supply cut after every four hour, totalling power outages to 12 hours in a day.
The non-availability of power was also causing less supply of water, which was resulting into almost no work at wet industries. “My own textile processing industry is closed for the last five-day owing to this long power load shedding factor.”
Earlier, the SSGC had announced to lower gas supply to industries from October 24 to November 4 for the reason that it was doing maintenance work at its one of gas fields.
It was learnt that the company would do maintenance work at its another fields from November 6, which would be followed by winter season in which the gas supply to the industrial zones remains lower.
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