ISLAMABAD: Chronic power cuts threaten millions of jobs and have sparked violent protests, but the government says it will make up the shortfall in electricity with new power plants by the end of the year.

The cuts are an inconvenience for all, but a potential disaster for the textile sector, Pakistan’s biggest source of exports and its main manufacturing employer.

The situation has improved since last week after more water was released from reservoirs and better oil supplies to thermal units brought down the deficit to between 2,500 and 3,000 MW.

But many parts of the country still face intermittent power cuts of eight hours a day.

‘The textile industry runs 24 hours a day and if eight hours are gone that means one-third of output has gone,’ said Tariq Mehmood, chairman of the All Pakistan Textiles Mills Association.

His association ran a newspaper advertisement on Monday saying production was coming to a grinding halt and the industry faced total collapse.

‘This sector contributes 60 per cent to the country’s exports and provides direct employment to 2.8 million people,’ he said.

Pakistan’s installed capacity is about 19,845 MW, of which about a third is produced by hydro-electric power. Much of the rest is generated by thermal plants, fuelled primarily by gas and oil.

Mehmood said many textile mills had their own gas-fired generators but they could not operate fully because of gas shortages as a result of rising winter demand.

Abdul Haq, a textile industry official in Faisalabad, said on Tuesday that nearly half of about 225,000 power looms in the city had been shut down for months because of the power cuts.

Secretary at the Power and Water Ministry, Ismail Qureshi, said the state power utility was trying to help by announcing a schedule for power cuts and, unlike last year, no factories would be forced to close.

In January last year, the government shut steel melting units across the country for two weeks and ordered hundreds of textile mills to reduce operations to cope with the power shortage.

Qureshi said the government had authorised investors to rent power plants and it had expedited the process of setting up independent power producers (IPP) to help fully meet the supply gap by the end of 2009.

‘Through combined effects of rental power units and IPPs, we will get an additional 3,500 MW, which is the current deficit in the system,’ he told Reuters.