Assocham expresses its serious concern on imposition of a two-day compulsory power holiday for the industries in the State of Telangana. While all the segments of the industry will bear the impact, the small scale units will face death knoll says Assocham secretary general D.S. Rawat.
Increase in the cost of production and resultant loss in their competitiveness owing to the use of alternative energy sources can be sustained by some industries for some time, disruptions in the production schedules would make the SMEs finding it difficult to meet their supply commitments thereby leading to loss of business orders.
Ultimately the Assocham secretary general said, this would lead to job loss of up to 50% in the factory sector. In view of the impending economic loss and labour unrest, the State Government must immediately explore the opportunities to normalize power situation with the Centre Government.
Assocham says the state should urgently be tapping non-conventional energy sources like wind power generation and solar photovoltaic has of late become an essential ingredient of state development strategy. Districts like Palamur are blessed with long tracts of lands and good solar insolation.
The total capacity of solar systems installed so far is insignificant as compared to the potential. Even, of the sanctioned projects only a fraction of them have installed systems to tap the energy. Thus, the new government must focus more on sanctioning of new projects and implementing those projects on priority. Unused government lands must be allocated for installing viable concentrated photovoltaic and wind turbine generators.
Telangana state needs to pay more focus on improvement of its power sector. The state is endowed with abundant coal needed for thermal power generation. The state needs to initiate adequate measures to reduce the quantitative and qualitative shortfall in the supply of power, particularly for industries. It needs to encourage the private sector to participate in efforts to increase the generation capacity.
