Power supply issues are affecting industries in Goa, says CII

The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Goa chapter has said power shortages, outages and unplanned shutdowns were affecting industries in the state though the government has maintained there were no electricity supply constraints.

On Wednesday, Power Minister Sudin Dhavalikar had claimed Goa does not face any power supply issues like in states such as Andhra Pradesh. In Andhra Pradesh, industries are not running even for five hours a day sometimes due to load-shedding. We are far better, Dhavalikar had said after attending a meeting of the power department. In a press note here on Thursday, the CII Goa chapter has recommended to Dhavalikar several measures that are needed to ensure industries do not suffer due to any power supply-related issues.

The CII has pointed out that in the past it had made several recommendations to the state government with regards to improvement in basic infrastructure for industries, including uninterrupted power supply, but rued no progress has been made" on them.

Fluctuation and variations on frequency and voltage and unplanned power shutdowns have led to the industry facing huge losses in terms of time and money due to outage/surge in currents causing damage of very expensive machinery, and raw material in the process based industries, it added. The apex trade body said on several occasions, industries have been forced to depend on gensets (generator sets) for power supply. It should be understood that the use of gensets is not really an option as it is not economically viable and hugely affects the cost of production apart from being unsustainable due to usage of fossil fuels, it said.