BHEL Small Industries’ Assn, Shock on power holiday

TIRUCHIRAPALLI: The BHEL Small Industries’ Association (BHELSIA) has expressed its shock over the decision of the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board to enforce power holidays with effect from today, in addition to the existing peak hour restrictions. In a statement here today, Association’s President Rajappa Rajkumar said the power shortage has badly hurt the hundreds of BHELSIA units supplying components to BHEL. The ancillary units have been losing several crores of rupees on account of idle labour. Next month, the BHELSIA will be in an unenviable situation of delivering 60,000 tonnes of components, he claimed. Rajkumar, who is also the vice president of Tamil Nadu Tiny and Small Industries’ Association, said with the additional burden of power holiday, we will not be in a position to meet the target set by BHEL. It will be extremely diffi cult to deliver 15,000 tones a week in the prevailing situation. He also pointed out that initially, industries thought that barring the day of power holiday, uninterrupted power would be provided rest of the days. Now that the power availability has been further curtailed, the survival of BHEL’s ancillaries in and around Tiruchirapalli will be at stake. If the situation continued, the BHEL would be forced to outsource work to vendors in other States and it would be a blow to the local economy, he added. Unscheduled power cuts have already damaged machineries and crippled the industrial process, besides the quality of work gets affected at times of unscheduled power cuts due to which temperature of heat treatment furnaces cannot be maintained, he added. He further said that once supply resumes after a power cut, the heat treatment furnace has to be switched on again for the required number of hours for reaching the requisite temperature before the jobs could be carried out. He said that a delegation would meet the TNEB chairman shortly with a request to ensure uninterrupted power supply on the rest of the week barring the day of power holiday.