The festival season is when the apparel makers in India get really busy. But for jeans makers in Ballari in Karnataka, adversity has come from unexpected quarters. Their nemesis: frequent, and unpredictable, power cuts.
Ballari has more than 500 jeans manufacturing units. With Dasara and Deepavali around the corner, demand for jeans has never been higher, and the local units are sitting on large bookings amid robust demand. However, standing in the way of fulfilling the demand are unscheduled and irregular disruptions in power.
“Presently we have good orders from other states, mainly because of the festival season. The unscheduled load shedding is our biggest worry”, says Pollux Mallikarjun, a jeans manufacturing unit owner from Ballari.
Power cuts not only stop regular work, but also damage the raw materials, increasing the cost and time needed for production.
Owners say they had to put up with irregular and sudden power disruptions that went upto three to four four hours everyday in the previous month.
“We need electricity in the morning.. for the last one month, three to four hours of load shedding was recorded in the region,” said Mallikarjun.
“In the name of maintenance, they cut the power supply 10 to 15 minutes every two hours. We are worried that this time we will not be able to reach our target and it will affect the business.”
Considering the huge challenge it poses to their business, jeans manufacturers have requested the government to issue a notice in advance to any disruption in power supply.
In response to queries on the power disruption, a senior official from GESCOM has informed that the unscheduled load shedding was due to a shortage in power supply and has been resolved already while the current power disruptions are mainly caused by maintenance works in the region.
“The daily power intake for Ballari district is 150 Megawatt… we have managed to resolve the issue of load shedding by Tuesday. The current power disruptions go for less than one hour and are due to maintenance works in the region,” he said.