Hit by power cuts, industry wants govt to share wage bill

'Small units in the states are unable to generate revenues'

The Federation of Andhra Pradesh Industries (Fapi) on Monday demanded the state government to pay half of the workers' salaries as it claimed that the factories were running just at 30 per cent of the capacity owing to power cuts.

Explaining the impact of power cuts on the industry, Fapi president BV Rama Rao said most of the small units in the states had turned NPAs as they were unable to generate revenues to be able to repay bank loans.

"The severity of the situation is such that we have never witnessed this kind of industrial distress in the past 40 years," Rao said while attributing the ongoing power crisis to the "incompetence and indifferent attitude" of the state chief minister.

According to him, there are about 185,000 micro, small and medium scale manufacturing units in the state employing over 2 million workers as compared with 4,381 large industries employing about 1 million workers. Yet, the government did not bother to ensure the well-being of small industries, he said.

Besides bearing half of the workers' wages, the government should also impress upon the Centre to announce a 2-year moratorium on loan repayments considering the special circumstances prevailing in the state, Rao said.