Tamil Nadu   

Unscheduled power cuts hit knitwear industry

TIRUPUR: Despite Electricity Minister Arcot N. Veeraswami’s claim that electricity supply goes off only for half-an-hour a day in the State, the knitwear town of Tirupur and surroundings experience unscheduled power cuts for five to six hours a day causing huge loss to the industry.

“Tirupur has been witnessing frequent power cuts for the last couple of months. After a long gap we are experiencing misery. This causes an extra burden at a time when we are reeling under problems in the wake of riding rupee against US dollar,” remarks Ahill M.S. Mani, president of Tirupur Industrial Federation.

Industry sources said the unscheduled power cuts for five to six times a day affected small and big industrial houses. According to Mr. Mani, many imported, high-end machinery in the processing sector goes out of order owing to the sudden cuts and fluctuation in power supply.

Right from spinning mills to small time traders have been affected by the frequent cuts. Many job work tailoring units who undertake orders from domestic hosiery brands are the worst-hit. More than 1,000 small time tailoring houses do not have generators as an alternative.

“On an overage power goes off for six to eight times a day. It takes at least 15 minutes to restart the production. Besides causing production loss, in most occasions it costs us much more as the quality of the fabric (which is on process during the power cut) suffered thus leading to rejection,” says D. Jaishankar, who runs a collar unit.

While every businessman fumes over the power cuts, only one segment witnesses a bustling business: petrol bunks. A petrol station owner says there has been a 100 per cent increase in sale of diesel in these days. “Our average sale of diesel is 9,000 litres a day and it doubled in recent days as garment units buy diesel to run their units using gensets,” he says.

“It works out 100 per cent more if we run the units using generators,” Mr. Mani says appealing to the Government to announce the timings of power cuts.

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