Chamber of commerce blasts Pak govt over electricity shortage

The Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry expressed grave concern that power riots in Faisalabad may engulf other parts of the country.

The LCCI President Irfan Qaiser Sheikh described the electricity situation as "fast turning from bad to worse and forcing the people to take to the streets."

Sheik said that cheaper and uninterrupted power supply is only way to achieve economic targets but neither the government is sharing its future plans to this regard nor paying any heed to the difficulties being faced by the trade and industry. According to him, the business community was unable to understand that why the government did not present any energy solution in the last four years. The recent surge in unemployment graph and lawlessness was caused by the electricity shortage, which in turn caused the closure of a large number of industrial units.

He said the industry needs a continuous supply of electricity to keep the units operational and to complete the export orders well within the given timeframe but only because of the shortage of electricity the exports are not up to the mark.

Pakistan had already lost a number of international markets and the new longer hour power cuts would further aggravate the situation, he added.

He said most of industrial units had already reduced their working to single six-hour shift from the previous three shifts system. This led to increased level of raw-material wastage leaving production process non-profitable, he added. “The crisis in industrial sector is not only causing flight of capital and relocation of industrial units to the countries like Bangladesh and Malaysia but had also reduced government revenue drastically,” he said.

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