The Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry has expressed grave concern over the power riots in Faisalabad and feared that the violent protests may engulf other parts of the country if the government fails to take corrective measures immediately.
In a statement issued on Thursday, LCCI President Irfan Qaiser Sheikh said despite the tall claims made by the government, the electricity situation is turning from bad to worse and forcing the people to take to the streets.
Sheikh said the frequency of the power outages is enough to prove that no governance-like thing exists in the country; otherwise the situation would have been quite encouraging today.
The LCCI president said the business community was unable to understand that why the government did not present any energy solution in the last four years. He stated that the recent surge in the unemployment graph and lawlessness is a result of the electricity shortage that has caused the closure of a large number of industrial units.
Sheikh said the industry needs a continuous supply of electricity to keep the units operational and to complete the export orders well within the given timeframe but that because of the shortage of electricity, the exports were not up to the mark.
He said Pakistan has already lost a number of international markets and the new longer hour power cuts would further aggravate the situation. The LCCI president said that cheaper and uninterrupted power supply is only way to achieve economic targets but the government is neither sharing its future plans in this regard nor paying any heed to the difficulties being faced by the industry.
The LCCI president also feared a surge in street crimes, saying that the law and order situation is bound to aggravate in the coming days as repeated power outages in the industrial estates is jacking up the graph of unemployment, particularly hitting the daily wagers hard.
He said most of industrial units had already reduced their operating times to single six-hour shifts from the previous three-shift system. This had led to increased level of raw-material wastage leaving production processes non-profitable.
The crisis in the industrial sector is not only causing the flight of capital and the relocation of industrial units to the countries like Bangladesh and Malaysia, but had also reduced government revenues drastically.
The LCCI president added that the electricity crisis has crippled the industrial and economic activities and made life a nightmare for the people.
He stated that trade and industry had completely collapsed due to the unprecedented and prolonged power outages.
“Previous orders are being cancelled and new orders have dried up and situation is immensely grim and serious due to unscheduled load shedding,” he said.
He stated that the whole society was in the grip of frustration, which could lead to crime and severe mental unrest.
The LCCI president said it was unfortunate that the authorities concerned were totally oblivious of the situation and subjecting the province to load shedding and power cuts of 15-18 hours whereas in other parts of the country load shedding was being carried out for only a short period of time.
