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| Grim power scenario, fat power bills add to miseries of businessmen | | | Early Times Reporter
Jammu | May 5
Frequent blackouts during peak working hours is adversely affecting business prospects of commercial units and industrialists as cost of production and running business units is going up in Jammu and Kashmir .
If power situation worsens during the summer season further we will be almost on the brink of suffering huge losses," Satish Gupta, owner of a commercial unit in city market said."We are spending huge power bills to run our business establishments yet we are not receiving adequate uninterrupted power supply during peak hours, large number of industrialists in Bari Brahmana Industrial estate said in their fresh plea to the state government to improve the power situation and reduce irregular curtailments especially during peak hours.
Each day the industrial units and main city markets have to bear 4-8 hour curtailment forcing them to rely on power back up and generator sets to run their business establishments.These units on an average consume 25 per cent of the total power supply as compared to 40 per cent by the domestic consumers.
The state is facing acute power shortage due to widening gap between demand and supply.Against a total requirement of 1400 MW's at peak load the state normally receives 950-1000 MW's from all sources including centre power sector.
The PDD department had introduced several measures to improve the power situation but increase in peak load and decline in power generation is causing lot of problems, a senior PDD official said. Poor revenue realization is another factor which is affecting power purchasing capacity of the state. Already Union power Ministry has served stern warning to the state government to clear its power dues worth 644 crore or face action.
"We appeal to the senior PDD officials to adopt corrective measures and enforce discipline in the PDD department so that we get uninterrupted power supply", Pawan Kumar, another industrialist said.President of Chambers commerce and Industry Ram Sahai has also urged the state power department to provide uninterrupted power to the industrialists so that they can run their business establishments and production units with out suffering huge loses and losing their clientele. Comparing domestic and commercial tariffs, Sahai said a commercial unit is charges double the tariff and is provided with uninterrupted power for only 4-5 hours where a domestic customer who is paying half the rent is getting uninterrupted power for over 16 hours. |
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