Prolonged gas, electricity loadshedding: people, businessmen, daily wagers suffer adversely

Peoples, business community and labourers especially daily wagers have suffered adversely from Gas Load Management (GLM) and prolonged electricity load-shedding here in industrial city, on Tuesday. Powerlooms workers and owners staged protest rally against acute shortage of cotton yarn, non-availability of electricity for more than 14 hours.
Protestors have blocked the Jhang Road, Samundri Road and Sargodha Road and burnt old Tyers and raised slogans against the FESCO and demanded regular supply to Powerlooms Industry for saving their livelihood. According to reports, the worst effected areas, facing low gas pressure and hours-long electricity outages, included Khurrianwala, Jaranwala, Gojra, Jhang, Chiniot, Toba Tek Singh, Kamalia, Pir Mahal, Tandlianwala, Dijkot and several areas and Towns located in Faisalabad Division.
People have also complained that house women face adversities in cooking breakfast and lunch and appealed to the government for provision of relief in intense winter season. Students are going to school without breakfast. In general and the local industrialists in particular continued to face energy and Gas crisis, while more than 800 petrol pumps went dry and over 500 gas stations could not provide CNG because of the 16-hour-long power outages.
The transporters had faced difficulties because of non-availability of petrol and continued CNG strike coupled with the scheduled two-day gas holiday in the Faisalabad and Sargodha Division. The loadshedding hit both the commercial and domestic consumers and units in the Industrial Estate Khurrianwala and elsewhere in the central Punjab came to a virtual halt.
Talking to newsmen, Khurram Mukhtar Chairman, Pakistan Textile Exporters Association, Rana Ikhlaq Ahmad, Chairman, All Pakistan Cotton Powerlooms Association (APCPA) and other office-bearers of textile association stated that value added textile industry was continuously protesting against the unrestricted export of cotton yarn and unprecedented increase in its prices in the domestic market since last 8 weeks.
Crisis was repeatedly brought in to the notices of Government officials in various meetings held at Islamabad. The Government also promised to take necessary remedial measures but no practical step have so far been taken, they added. They said that unbridled export of yarn has not only created supply crunch but also escalated the prices in the domestic market.
Taking advantage of the trend in Cotton Yarn prices, Polyester Fibre prices were also raised. Despite the fact that prices of Polyester has come down internationally. With abnormal high jump in prices of raw material, the cost of Value Added textile products enhanced enormously and the export of finished goods become non-viable in the face of tough competition in the international market.
The office-bearers of value added textile sector called upon the government to take all possible steps to resolve the problems as without overcoming these issues, the textile export target of 25 billion dollar would be hard to achieve in the prevailing conditions. They demanded immediate cognisance of this serious matter by the Government failing which the textile industry as well as textile exports would collapse.
They also condemned the recent hike in the prices of gas and electricity and said that there is no reason to raise their prices at this critical stage and demanded to withdraw this decision. They demanded of the Government to take immediate action to cap the export of yarn at last year's volume till January 7 failing which a countrywide strike will be launched and the industrial wheel would be jammed across the country.
Presently, they said that about 20 million kilogram shortage of cotton yarn per month coupled with exorbitant price hike cotton yarn and polyester fibre in domestic market is forcing the closure of value added textile industry. Snatching the morsel from the mouth of 4.5 million worker's families, creating unemployment and destroying home textile industry, they said.
The country has already lost 400 million dollar in foreign exchange over the last five months as result of the myopic free trade order unrestrained export of cotton yarn, they contended. Export of cotton yarn has created not only supply crunch in domestic market but also enjoined the foreign buyers to divert their export orders to other countries like China, Bangladesh and India.
These countries are importing cheaper cotton yarn from Pakistan and exporting finished goods at competitive prices in international markets, they said. These countries are ousting Pakistan and capturing its export markets. Pakistan is thus losing its credibility and share in international markets, they said.
Debunking the free trade economy claim, they said that it was unrealistic, myopic and selfish slogan. When the value added sector earning five times more foreign exchange for the country and providing ten times more jobs to workers was being sacrificed for only one fifth part of the country would be devastated.
They said that spinner's lobby was trying to sabotage Government's first ever five-year textile policy in the history of Pakistan and hindering the achievement of 25 billion dollar export target. They said that 300 spinning industries should not be allowed to hijack thousands of value added textile industries and the ancillary industries generating employment to millions of workforce.
Emphasising the importance of textile industry as base line of national economy, Khurram Mukhtar said that textile sector employed 40 percent of total workforce in the country and thousands of ancillaries depended on this sector. Joblessness of this workforce would create industrial unrest and the labour would be constrained to come on the street and create a worse law and order situation in the country, he said.