Industrialists in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have demanded of the government to ensure low-cost and uninterrupted electricity and gas supply to manufacturing units for the promotion of industrialisation.
Besides, the KP manufacturers have called for prompt steps to resolve the Letter of Credits (LCs) issue which is halting industrialisation.
These issues were taken up during Governor Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Ghulam Ali’s visit to the Industrial Estate, Hayatabad, Peshawar paid on the invitation of Industrialists Association Peshawar (IAP) President Malik Imran Ishaq, said in a press release issued here on Friday.
Mayor Peshawar Zubair Ali was also accompanying the KP governor.
Malik Imran, in his opening remarks of the occasion, raised various issues of industrialists mostly related to electricity, gas, collection of fixed billing charges, and quarter tariff adjustment in power bills, etc.
KP is producing natural gas in surplus quantity and new discoveries of gas were also reported in the province, the IAP chief said.
He said under constitutional article 158-A, the first right on KP’s natural gas is of the people of KP, however, a cheap and uninterrupted electricity supply is not being provided to industrial, commercial, and domestic consumers in the province.
Similarly, he raised concern over fixed billing charges and quarter tariff adjustments in power bills, saying that KP is also self-sufficient in electricity production but electricity was unavailable to industrial and commercial consumers in the province. The IAP president asked to immediately halt fixed billing charges and collection quarter tariff adjustments besides ensuring the provision of cheap and uninterrupted power supply to industries.
Ghazanfar Bilour, while speaking on the occasion, took up the issue of LCs before Governor KP, saying that the process of industrialisation is near stagnation owing to the non-opening of LCs. Besides, he added an unprecedented increase was also seen in the cost of industrial production.
A large number of goods trucks have been stuck up at Karachi port owing to the non-opening of LCs, and heavy demurrage charges were being collected on a daily basis, because of which industrialists have been faced with financial as well as production losses, Bilour informed.—APP
