Impact Of Powercut Will Closure Of Textile Mills
The power crisis in the State, if allowed to continue, will snowball into serious industrial and social unrest, besides leading to closure of textile mills, the Southern India Mills’ Association (SIMA) has said. “In many textile mills, the workers have started agitating against power stoppage. Immediate action is required to arrest the trend, which will have unpleasant social implications,” according to SIMA chairman K V Srinivasan.
“The present situation of 40 per cent power shortage will lead to thousands of people losing their jobs and industrial unrest due to the consequential lay off.” He said the industry was shocked over the TNEB’s instruction not to draw power during peak hours, between 6 pm and 10 pm, with a warning of disconnection in case of violation. This, besides the five to eight hours of load shedding. The situation was alarming and will lead to closure of the textile industry in the State.
A study by the South India Textile Research Association showed that textile mills should achieve minimum 90 per cent utilisation for breakeven. If it went below 85 per cent, the mills would become sick. In the last 11 months, the average utilisation in the textile units had gone below 75 per cent. “TNEB’s recent instruction on power restriction will bring down the utilisation to 60 per cent resulting in definite closure of the industry,” Srinivasan said. He urged the State to come out with a scheme for operating High Speed Diesel (HSD) oil generators available with the textile industries.
Saying that TNEB was already paying Rs 15 per unit for purchase of power from independent producers, he said the State could consider reimbursing the cost of generation using HSD oil, which worked out to only Rs 11 per unit. Closure of textile units would result in large-scale unemployment, particularly women in rural areas. Meanwhile, in Tirunelveli the load shedding schedule has been increased from the existing five hours to six-anda- half hours from October 10 onwards, chief engineer (distribution), TNEB, S Sundararaman, said on Friday
