The Sui Northern Gas Pipelines (SNGPL) suspended gas supply to 380 CNG stations here on Friday morning for two days, while thousands of power looms and textile ancillaries remained closed due to prevailing liquidity crunch and precious machinery becoming scrap.
Addressing a meeting of industrialists, Salamat Ali, Chairman of Pakistan Hosiery Manufacturers & Exporters Association (PHMA) North Zone, said that supply of gas had been completely suspended to textile industries for 22 days in December and 23 days in January, and this was happening only in Punjab.
He demanded that business community and value-added textile industry must be taken into confidence, while policy making, to resolve the energy crisis, financial crisis and worst ever law and order situation. He said that 4 to 6 days' suspension of gas had badly affected the production of exports goods, and textile industry is under extreme pressure. Salamat said that the government could not achieve any monetary goal by increasing discount rate yet he failed to realise that highest bank rate prevailing in the country is resulting in a mass number of defaulters.
He expressed grave concern over the stuck up drawback claims of research and development (R&D), which are pending for last five years. He observed that the stoppage of payment of such claims would yield problems for textile industry, which is facing liquidity crunch due to multiple crises. Meanwhile, working women of textile industry took out a protest procession in Batala Colony and demanded of the government to end the gas load shedding for industrial sector.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.