Power Cuts Force Kerala Units To Down Shutters

The 100 per cent power cut introduced by the Kerala government on high-tension and extra-high-tension industrial consumers since Monday in the light of the precarious storage position in hydro-electric reservoirs has caught major industries in the state unawares, leading to some of them downing their shutters already, while the rest plan to follow suit in the next few days.

The worst affected are major industries like the Indian Aluminium Company (Indal), public sector Fertiliser & Chemicals of Travancore Ltd (FACT), state-owned Travancore Cochin Chemicals (TCC), Carbon & Chemicals India Ltd (Cacil), Premier Tyres, Apollo Tyres, Carborandum Universal Ltd and a host of other power-intensive units, besides semi-intensive units, mainly in the Ernakulam-Aluwa industrial belt.

 

These units were already reeling under severe restrictions on power consumption introduced by the state government months before the cent per cent cut was introduced, leading to their drastically curbing production, official sources said.

Indal and TCC have already shut down their entire production units, while several others like Premier Tyres and HMT are seriously thinking in terms of either laying of workers or cutting down production to the minimum level. Out of the total 165 major industrial units seriously hit by the cent per cent cut, 35 are extra-high-tension consumers.

Meanwhile, hundreds of seafood processing plants and ice plants in the seafood sector in coastal areas have also started downing their shutters threatening a drastic fall in seafood exports, a major forex spinner.

The foundry division of HMT has already been closed while its main machine tools division is to bring down production level to 50 per cent in the next few days. However, operations at the Cochin port have not been affected so far.

Ancillary units of major industries are also in deep trouble. Only those having generators can maintain production and even if they do so, there will not be any takers as major units to which they cater to are closing down one by one.

A spokesman for the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Kerala Chapter said the cent per cent power cut introduced without any advance intimation was quite unfair and a severe blow to the whole industrial sector in the state. The confederation had already conveyed its protest to the government, he said.

Only very few units like the Indian Rare Earths Ltd (IRE) have sufficient captive power generation to withstand the power cut.

Though units like FACT have captive units, their capacity is limited and sufficient to operate only a few divisions.

According to official sources, the production loss would be around Rs 50 lakh a day in Premier Tyres and Rs 1 crore in Apollo Tyres in the event of closing down of the production units. In the case of Indal, which has already stopped production, the loss was to the tune of Rs 36 lakh a day.

The cent per cent power cut is estimated to result in the loss of over 4 lakh mandays per month in the state as a whole. It was in December last the 50 per cent cut was introduced.

The total power consumption in Kerala is around 24-26 million units a day and the present generation is just half of it. The rest of the requirement is being met from the central pool.

Of the total labour in the state, 9 per cent is in factories, 6 per cent in public sector and 3 per cent in private sector units. Of the entire industrial labour, at least 75 per cent will be affected by the cent per cent cut.

Meanwhile, there are no signs yet of a vigorous monsoon which is the only ray of hope.

Last year around this time, the storage in the states hydel reservoirs was just enough to produce 188 million units, while at present it is hardly sufficient to produce 182 million units.