Demanding a financial package to the State industry for the losses suffered by it due to the current forced lockdown on account of power supply mismanagement, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president Sukhbir Singh Badal on Wednesday called for supplying power to the industry at the promised landing cost of Rs 5 per unit.
“After suffering huge losses due to COVID lockdown since the last one and a half years, the industrial sector is presently in the grip of a power lockdown with the Government imposing a three-day compulsory off for the industrial sector besides closing down large scale industries for five days and reducing contracted power load of continuous supply to industry by 50 percent. This has broken the back of the State industry which is suffering losses of crores of rupees on a daily basis besides losing orders,” he said.
Asserting that Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh was directly responsible for this state of affairs as he held the power portfolio, Sukhbir said: “Required power purchases should be made immediately to ensure adequate power for the industrial sector”.
He said that simultaneously, the industry should be offered a financial package for the losses incurred by it besides deferring collection of bills for the current cycle by two months.
“Power should also be provided at a landing cost of Rs five per unit as promised by the Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh,” he said while disclosing that the industry was currently paying nearly Rs 10 per unit”.
Sukhbir also demanded holding a special session of the Vidhan Sabha to discuss the complete mismanagement of the State electricity utility. “PSPCL, which had been declared as the best electricity utility in 2015 during the SAD government led tenure, is now finding it difficult to even supply adequate power to the consumers,” he said adding that rampant corruption, mismanagement, and the Congress Government’s failure to add a single megawatt of power in the last four and a half years has led to a situation where farmers are not getting adequate supply for their paddy crop even as unscheduled power cuts are being imposed on domestic consumers.
Asking the Congress Government to focus on providing affordable and dependable power to Punjabis, he said that instead of doing this, the Government was trying to divert attention from its failures by talking about the Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) done with private thermal plants during SAD government tenure.