LAHORE, April 16: The Pakistan Industrial and Traders Associations Front (PIAF) has urged the chief justice  of Pakistan to take suo motu notice of the ‘unprecedented’ loadshedding due to which industrial production has nosedived and the law and order situation is worsening with the every passing day.

PIAF chairman Malik Tahir Javaid said in a statement on Tuesday that industrialists knocked every door for electricity supply to the industry, but unfortunately there had been no let up in loadshedding.

The power outages were depriving the industrial workers of their livelihood and causing a considerable financial loss to the industry. Two hours of loadshedding after every hour brought the industrial wheel to a halt, as the industry needed at least eight hours of regular power supply to complete processes.

The PIAF chairman said nobody would be able to keep industrial workers from protests and demonstrations in the coming days if the situation was not controlled.

Javaid said ‘massive’ loadshedding was bringing a bad name to the government and forcing industrialists to close their units for an indefinite period and render hundreds of thousands of people jobless.

The previous government, he said, had made tall claims about electricity supply, but in the end nothing concrete was done. At the moment, neighbouring countries are getting huge export orders, but the situation in Pakistan has been the other way round and investments here have gone down to considerably low levels.

Javaid appealed to the chief justice to look into the energy situation and direct the authorities to make public the details about the power generation capacity of the country and its consumption.

He said on the one hand the Federal Board of Revenue was issuing SROs to collect more money from businessmen and on the other the businessmen were not being supplied enough electricity to run their industrial units.

The FBR should at least convey to the government that it would not be able to meet its revenue target in the absence of gas and electricity, said the PIAF chairman.