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LAHORE: The hopes to start full-fledged production at Sundar Industrial Estate in view of the resumption of gas supply after one-and-a-half months dashed on Wednesday because of power breakdown which the industrialists said was sudden and devastating.
The outage continued from 8am to 6pm – the timings during which the industrialists had planned to run their factories at full production capacity to cover up the losses they had been suffering since the suspension of gas supply to the industrial estate on Dec 22.
They industrialists strongly protested against the shutdown and convened a meeting of their board of management on Thursday (today) to decide how to counter it.
“We had planned to resume full-fledge production after so many days, and had called staff for the purpose in the morning. But power shutdown did not allow us to utilise the gas which has been given to us three days a week after the suspension of its supply on Dec 22,” said the estate’s board of management president Ahsan Butt.
No official concerned of Lesco was available for comment despite several attempts.
The multi-billion rupees industrial estate has 162 operational units employing over 100,000 workers. Its total capacity is 606 units, 200 of them are under construction.
According to Mr Butt and some other industrialists, they had bound their workers to reach the factories early in the morning to start production at 8am so as to fully utilise the gas supply available only for three days a week.
But, the factory owners and workers kept waiting for the resumption of the power supply till in the evening but in vain. They returned home in dismay and anger accusing the government of deliberately destroying industrial sector.
Mr Butt said the shutdown was sudden and imposed without consulting the board of management. The chief engineer of the industrial estate was informed about the shutdown only on Tuesday night, leaving no time for preparation of an alternate production plan.
And when the Lesco authorities were asked why they did not timely consulted the board so that production was not affected, they promised to send their officials for the purpose on Thursday.
Butt said contacts with Lesco authorities concerned on Wednesday brought more sad news as they explained that the shutdown was for five days and the board would be consulted for shutdowns that would follow.
“This is clearly an attempt to totally destroy industry. We fear power shutdown till Feb 25 which means loss of billions of rupees. The loss during this five-day shutdown alone is several million US dollars,” he said.
