The industry expressed shock on the reported instructions by TNEB not to draw power between 6 PM and 10 PM, with a warning of disconnection in case of violation on the part of industrial units, apart from five to eight hours scheduled/unscheduled load shedding.

Dr K V Srinivasan, Chairman of Southern India Mills' Association (SIMA) said only option available to tide over the power crisis affecting all sections of consumers for the next three of four hours was to utilise the idle capacity on a need basis.

The industry accounted for 1/3rd of the textile size and 50 per cent of the spinning capacity in the country, providing jobs for over 10 million people directly and indirectly and fetching foreign exchange to the tune of rs.30,000 crore, he said.

Stating that wind and hydel power generations were only seasonal in nature and therefore would never be able to solve the problem, he said that since the entire country was facing power shortage problem, Tamil Nadu would not be in a position to source power either from the Central grid or from other States or independent power producers.

While TNEB was already paying upto rs.15 per unit for purchase of power from independent power producers, the Government could consider reimbursing the cost of generation using HSD oil which worked out to only rs.11 per unit for the present fuel cost, Srinivasa said. Industry has not been demanding any subsidy or concession from the Government, but only to supply uninterrupted power to enable the industry to survive and compete in the global market. He said textile mills should achieve minimum 90 per cent utilisation for breakeven and if the utilisation went below 85 per cent, the mills would become sick and the average utilisation in the textile units during the last 11 months had gone well below 75 per cent resulting in huge cash losses. The announcement of additional restriction on power supply would bring down the capacity utilisation to 60 per cent resulting in definite closure of the entire textile industry in the State, he claimed.

The 40 per cent power shortage would lead to loss of jobs to several lakhs of people, industrial unrest due to consequent lay off, he said, adding that in many mills the workes have already started agitating against the stoppage.

If this trend continued, the State would face serious industrial and social unrest, Srinivasan said and appealed to all political parties to work collectively to solve the power crisis in the overall interests of industry and public and impress upon the Government to announce the scheme for operating the HSD oil generators immediately. - Agencies

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