Unscheduled power cuts hit Parsa-Bara industrial corridor

PARSA, MAR 11 -

Factories in the Parsa-Bara Industrial Corridor have been hit by extended hours of load shedding , with a majority of them staring at closure due to power outage that lasts 17 hours a day—two hours more than what has been declared  by the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA).

Hari Gautam, chief of Electricity Department of the Birgunj Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI) said that the unscheduled additional two hours of load shedding had further compounded the problem. “There is also frequent disruption of power supply during the remaining hours in the day,” he said.

 Such disruption in power supply has mainly affected the manufacturing units of steel and plastics industries.

The factories are struggling to resume the production as broiler machines and motors are being damaged due to unscheduled power cuts.

 “There are cases of up to 10 motors being damaged at once in a single factory,” noted Gautam. Industrialists complained about Nepal Electricity Authority apathy, saying that NEA officials stay away from solving the problem with excuses that they lacked transformers and feeders.

According to them, none of the industries in the corridor run above 33 percent of their full capacity.

Tripurari Singh, engineer at the NEA’s Birgunj Distribution Centre, said that they had not been able to meet the electricity demand as the central office has not sent the required  quantity of transformers for the last two years.

On the unscheduled power cuts, he said that it was based on the NEA policy to reduce power supply in areas where pilferage is higher than 40 percent.

The corridor is recognised as the biggest and largest revenue-paying industrial area in the country.

As the industries are unable to run in full fledge, even the government’s revenue collection from the Parsa-Bara industries have dropped below 50 percent, claimed Gautam.

Having taken out loans at high interest, a majority of industries are on the brink of being declared ‘sick industries’.

Guatam has also complained of providing comparatively more hours of electricity to industrial corridors in Biratnagar, Bhairahawa and Hetauda.

Another industrialist Subodh Kumar Gupta, who is also vice-president of the BCCI, said that the power supply problem has been worse this year compared to the past.

“We had not felt this kind of critical situation in past,” he said.

There are around 500 factories in the Parsa-Bara Industrial Corridor which employ an estimated 50,000 people.

Source: The Kathmandu Post