KARACHI, June 17: Production of cars and light commercial vehicles (LCVs) at the Pak Suzuki Motor Company Limited has stopped due to non-availability of power.

“The production plant remained inoperative since Thursday last owing to the cable and PMT faults,” company spokesman Shafiq Ahmed Shaikh told Dawn on Tuesday.

He, however, said that the power was restored at 1:00pm on Tuesday but the production to full capacity remained shut. The company would start full-fledged auto production from Wednesday.

Offices and some small operation systems, performed manually in the plant, were working on stand-by generators, he said.

Keeping in view of the current monthly production, the company had been making around 400 units of cars and LVCs per day and the cumulative production loss since Thursday comes to over 2,000 units, which is a huge production loss.

The delivery schedule to the customers on fresh bookings may be extended by one week from the original date of delivery, he said, adding that the delivery on previous bookings had so far faced no problem. The company would try its best to avoid any extension in delivery timing in future, he added.

A vendor of the company, who asked not to be named, said that actually the production had been suspended from last Wednesday. Since the plant was shut down, the vendors were advised to check the company daily for supply of parts. Since last week the company had not been taking fresh supplies of parts and accessories from the vendors, he added.

He further said that the vendors were perturbed as to why the company had failed to make alternate arrangements for production of cars. On the contrary, he said that the vendors had always been pressurised to keep the supply normal no matter if there are power failures or other problems.

He feared that the company might change the production schedule when the supply will be restored in coming days.

Production of Suzuki Cultus, Alto, Mehran, Liana, Bolan and Ravi in May was recorded at 2,966, 1,608, 3,633, 96, 1,461 and 1,204 units, respectively. According to data issued by Pakistan Automotive Manufacturers Association production of Potohar jeep has been suspended since July 2007.

Meanwhile, an official of the Karachi Electric Supply Company said that he did not have information about reports of power failures in a particular industry as the company was looking after over two million customers.