Bangalore, industries clean bowled in ‘staggered power play’

The staggered holidays for industries were introduced to alleviate the effects of power shortage in the city; apparently, the trick failed as the industries have reported a downfall in their production and unscheduled power-cuts, too, persist.

President of Federation of Karnataka Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FKCCI), JR Bangera, said the move of introducing staggered holidays had not achieved its aim as the city was still facing the problem of load shedding.

He said as the move had failed, FKCCI asked for a rollback of staggered holidays.

He added that the industries needed uninterrupted power on all days for production, something that was not happening.
Bangera said the decision to ask workers to work on weekends backfired. In case of working couples, it would be difficult to spend quality time with family if the wife has off on Sunday but the husband has off on some other day.

Since staggered holidays were introduced, he said, many employees began to take their off on a weekday in addition to off on Sunday, by calling in ‘sick’ or seeking leave to attend to an ‘emergency’.

Bangera pointed out that introducing staggered holidays reduced the number of man hours the workers were putting, thus bringing down the production.

“We wanted to have roll back on the staggered holidays as they were hampering our production,” the FKCCI president said.
Power woes: Mission Impossible

Even as the city is consuming less power than usual, Bangalore is not exactly lit bright. Many areas in the city are bearing the brunt of intermittent power cuts. One reason could be that the hydel sources have shown a downswing in production.

Karnataka Power Transmission Corporation Limited has said that 21.42 MU of power is being generated by major hydel stations while 7.32 MU of power is being generated by minor hydel stations. Thermal stations generated only about 47.64 MU of power, with central generation stations generating about 33.90 MU.

While these figures might reflect that there is no electricity shortage in the city, power-cuts have not stopped. K Ramakrishan, director (technical), Bangalore Electricity Supply Company, said these power cuts are happening because of technical glitches at the Somannahalli station, where a 100-MVA station had to be replaced.

Ramakrishansaid the problem of load shedding would be over soon once the work was over.