Acting President, ICCI, Asad Farid has expressed deep concern over colossal production losses of billions of rupees per day due to ongoing more than 14- hours-long electricity load shedding in the Federal Capital.
He said that the chamber was being forced by all the trade and industrial associations to give a call for indefinite strike as the electricity outage have crippled their businesses, and the situation had turned deplorable to the extent that neither industrial units were operative nor were traders doing any business because of the electricity shortage.
ICCI Acting President also announced the intention of ICCI to stage a peaceful rally on June 20, starting from Blue Area to Parliament House against unscheduled and prolonged electricity outage, while he has invited all the traders, industrialists, trade bodies, labors and general messes to join hands with Islamabad Chamber against electricity load shedding.
He lambasted the prevailing power shortage, with negative impacts on the production process as well and export of value added industries which was considered to be a major foreign exchange earner of Pakistan has also recorded a steep fall due to electricity load shedding.
He urged the Government to take all possible steps for consistent supply of electricity to industries., shortage of which had been one of the major factors causing Pakistan’s economy to under-perform amongst -its regional peers.
He said the ICCI has repeatedly warned the Government about the massive lay-offs and industrial closures if it fails to immediately stop power outages but Government is not wiling to understand the ground realities.
Tariq Sadiq, Chairman Founder Group, Munawar Mughal, Mian Akram Farid, Khalid Javed former Presidents ICCI and others also showed concerned over a deteriorating electricity situation and strongly emphasized upon the Government to give immediate attention to run the existing power units by removing faults.
