Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) President Sukhbir Singh Badal on Wednesday demanded that the Congress government should offer a financial package to the State industry for the losses suffered by it due to the currently forced lockdown on account of power supply mismanagement, even as he called for supplying power to the industry at the promised landing cost of Rs five per unit.
In a statement here, the SAD President said after suffering huge losses due to the Covid lockdown since the last one and a half years, the industrial sector was 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 the industry by fifty per cent. He said, “This has broken the back of the State industry which is suffering losses of crores of rupees daily besides losing orders.”
Asserting that chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh was directly responsible for this state of affairs as he held the Power portfolio, Sukhbir Badal said, “required power purchases should be made immediately to ensure adequate power for the industrial sector.” He said 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 chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh,” he said while saying that the industry was currently paying nearly Rs ten per unit.
Badal also demanded holding a special session of the Vidhan Sabha to discuss the complete mismanagement of the State electricity utility. He said PSPCL, which had been declared as the best electricity utility in 2015 during the SAD government-led tenure, was now finding it difficult to even supply adequate power to the consumers. Asking the Congress government to focus on providing affordable and dependable power to Punjabis, he said 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 the SAD government tenure.
“If the government feels it can provide cheaper power that being given by the private thermal plants which are supplying power at Rs 2.89 per unit to PSPCL then the government should annul the PPAs immediately”. He said as far as the erstwhile SAD government was concerned, it had gone in for the lowest PPA arrangements with private thermal plants after following the policy laid down by the then UPA government led by Dr. Manmohan Sing
AAP Punjab has also demanded that Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh should compensate the industries for the economic losses incurred due to power shortage. AAP Punjab affairs in-charge and MLA from Delhi, Jarnail Singh alleged that Captain had ordered to shut down the industries instead of filling up the power shortage in the state, leaving thousands of people working in these industries unemployed and production coming to a standstill.