Power shortfall widens: Exemption to textile sector withdrawn

HAMID WALEED

LAHORE: The power shortfall on Wednesday surged to 6,000MW triggering power breakdowns in the country and leading to withdrawal of exemption from load shedding to the textile industry.

Pakistan Electric Power Company (Pepco) sources said relatively less Irsa indent and dead level at Tarbela Dam were the main cause of the power shortfall. They claimed the shortfall was not more than 4000MW.

Power generation through hydel, thermal and IPPs was recorded at 3,779MW, 1,829MW and 6,452MW, respectively. Meanwhile, power supply to KESC remained 690MW.

Textile industry was quite panicked with four hours announced load shedding on independent and grouped feeders and emergency meetings were held with the power authorities immediately. The power authorities, however, maintained that the decision was taken by the higher authorities in Islamabad and they were simply acting like an executing agency. However, they assured meanwhile that the problem will be fixed by the end of current week and exemption would be restored by early next week.

It may be noted that the textile industry has been enjoying complete exemption throughout last three weeks when power shortage had reached to 8000MW and the domestic consumers were forced to face two hours breakdown after every alternate hour.

The industry circles have expressed the fear that withdrawal of exemption of load shedding would hit the production capacity of the industry again and year-end exports are likely to stay within the vicinity of $12 billion against $14 billion of last fiscal year.

Meanwhile, public protests against power outages continued in different parts of the country. The consumers were quite furious over reports of further rise to the per unit cost and vowed to aggravate their protests ahead to get rid of incompetent government.