Severe power crisis, which forced the government to announce power holidays to the small industries, has made the spinning mills in Guntur and Krishna districts to reduce production by 25 to 35 per cent which made them to incur huge losses. As many as 60 spinning and ginning mills in cotton rich Guntur district are facing threat of huge loses, following power holiday, announced by the government. All the spinning mills reduced their production by 25 to 35 per cent during the last 15 days. The reduction of production by the spinning mills directly affect the cotton farmers as the mills reduced cotton procurement from the farmers considerably.
Talking to UNI, a spinning mill Manager, Sambasiva Rao said the profits of the spinning mills came down during the last three years due to high price of cotton. Now, despite, the cotton prices coming down, power cuts had forced the mills to reduce production resulting in losses. More than two lakh employees are working in the spinning mills in Guntur district alone and more than five lakh people eking livelihood, relaying on the spinning mills, official sources said. Sources said the spinning and ginning mills were utilizing more than 25 lakh bales of cotton, out of 60 lakh bales, producing in the state. Situation was not different at the Jawahar Auto Nagar, the biggest automobile industry in the country, here, where more than 55 small industries were expecting huge losses due to power shut downs. A representative of Andhra Pradesh Small Industries Association said 50 per cent of industrial operations were affected by the power cuts. The owners of the small industries held a round table conference here, yesterday and discussed about the fall outs of power cuts.
They appealed the government to provide uninterrupted power supply, except Sundays, to small industries and exempt them from power cuts. They feared that if power cuts are continued, the existence of small industries would be in jeopardy. UNI