All the industrial sectors will be facing 10 hours a day load-shedding from Wednesday to ensure uninterrupted power supply to domestic consumers during the holy month of Ramazan.
It may be noted that a delegation of export-led associations rushed to Islamabad on Wednesday to call on high-ups of the relevant ministries and seek exemption for industrial units depending solely on independent feeders. However, no major breakthrough could take place till the filing of this report. Sources privy to the development said a positive decision is expected today.
The export-led industries require 85 megawatt electricity to keep their operations intact throughout the Ramazan. Otherwise, they would have to suspend production of one shift that would lead to retrenchment of labour. The ministry of power has decided to carry out load shedding for industrial sector during sehri and iftar hours.
It is interesting to note that the government would deny power supply to the industrial units in Punjab which would hit their productivity for not having a parallel arrangement of power generation through captive power plants. These captive power plants are gas dependent and both the system gas as well as the RLNG is being supplied to keep their operations intact. However, a disparity of gas price for the industrial units in Sindh against those which are operating in Punjab has also caused a troublesome situation for gas dependent units in Punjab.
The industrial sources said the price of per unit electricity would shoot up to Rs 14 per kWh in Punjab against Rs 10 per kWh in Sindh due to the gas price disparity.
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