KARACHI, Sept 9: The Sindh Small Industries Corporation (SSIC) has started issuing notices to the owners of plots at Small Industrial Estates across the province for their failure to establish industrial units.

The corporation has issued over 400 notices to such owners asking them to pay the non-utilisation fee and also establish the industrial units. This was stated by the additional secretary of the Sindh Industries Department, Murli Manohar, while talking to media on Sunday.

Mr Manohar said that SSIC had established small industrial estates in Sukkur, Larkana, Sehwan, Dadu, Shikarpur, Kandhkot, Hyderabad, Mirpurkhas, Badin, Sanghar, Nawabshah, Thatta, Tando Adam, Gambat, Rohri, Hala etc but failed to get a positive response from the people.

“The corporation had prepared project profiles of a number of industrial units that could be established with small investment. It also offered loans and technical assistance for setting up the industries but even then no results could be achieved in most of the estates,” he added.

To a question, the official said that the government had simplified the procedure of setting up industries and now even an NOC was not required for this purpose except certain sectors including arms and ammunition, radioactive substances, security printing, high explosive material and alcoholic beverages.

However, Mr Manohar said that this policy had resulted into a mushroom growth of unregistered industrial units producing substandard goods creating pollution and violating other laws regarding minimum wages etc.

“About twenty per cent of all the industrial concerns are unregistered and located in residential and other non-industrial areas,” he said, adding that the government had asked to get themselves registered.

The official said that the development work on the Rs10 billion Textile City spread over 1,250 acres was under way in Karachi.

He said that it was a public-private partnership project of the federal and Sindh governments, banks etc and the provincial government had initially invested Rs100 million in the project.

—PPI