COIMBATORE: Over 500 members of the Federation of the Coimbatore Industrial Associations (FOCIA), the umbrella body of 18 associations, shut down their industrial units and staged a hunger strike near the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board’s (TNEB) powerhouse at Gandhipuram demanding the State government to withdraw the power tariff hike. Over 25,000 industrial units remained shut, the association said.
Among FOCIA’s demands are withdrawing the peak hour charges for LTCT (Low Tension Current Transformer) of 112 kW users and rolling back fixed charges to Rs 35 per kW for the LTCT 112 kW users.
Due to the strike, industries faced a loss of about Rs 50 crores, said Siva Shanmuga Kumar, president of COSMAFANone of the coordinators of FOCIA.
J James, president of TACT and another coordinator, said, “After industrialists’ opposition, the Tamil Nadu government which had fixed 25% peak charges for LTCT power users, reduced it to 15%. However, we demand the government withdraw the peak hour charges completely.
TANGEDCO has been collecting 15% extra charges as peak hour charges for 20% of the total consumption without fixing the time of the day meters to calculate the peak hour consumption which is totally unacceptable as the majority of the small-scale units operate between 9 AM and 6 PM peak.”
BJP district president Balaji Uthamaramasamy extended support to the protest and spoke against the DMK government. However, the industrialists urged him and his cadres to refrain from politicising the matter.