Gas crunch hits spinners
The productivity in the garment and textile mills in Ashulia, Kaliakoir and Savar industrial belts has declined significantly because of inadequate supply of gas and power, say industry insiders.
The energy crunch in summer has almost halved the output of some factories: the worst-hit.
"I can only run 30,624 out of 64,000 spindles in my factory for the low pressure of gas," said Hasan Mahmood, executive director of Malek Spinning Mills Ltd, one of the largest spinning mills at Kaliakoir in Gazipur.
He said they are forced to go 50 percent below the production capacity during daytime. However, the situation improves at night when gas consumption usually comes down.
This industrial belt feels the pinch of gas inadequacy from 11am to 2:30pm, the peak production hours.
As gas pressure mounts after dusk, all spindles could be back in operation, but the working hour is then over and the mill workers have gone home, said the top official of Malek Spinning. He however points to the partial operation of his factory at night under special arrangement, that is higher pay package for workers.
“We're struggling now, let alone our business expansion plan. The gas crunch stands in the way of such plan,” the textile miller further said.
He also points to some difficulties even in running the factory's seven generators for generating 6.3 megawatt of electricity.
As a result, the factory sometimes fails to maintain a certain standard of temperature inside, a pre-requisite to quality production, he said.
"We can only produce 20 tonnes of yarn a day against our capacity of 35 tonnes,” Mahmood said.
When his attention was drawn to the government's move to improve gas supply to industrial units through suspension of its supply to five fertiliser factories, he admitted to an improvement to some extent.
So is Bakhtiar Ahmed Khan's experience about gas crunch. Khan is the executive director of Purbani Group, an operator of a number of mills, including garments.
"Gas pressure is so low that I can hardly run my generators to produce 2.7 megawatts of electricity for running the garment division in daytime,” he said.
Factories of Purbani Group are also located on the same line of Malek Spinning Mills Ltd.
Khan said gas pressure improves a bit on Friday, the weekly public holiday when consumption of this energy in the CNG filling stations halves.
He points to a 30 percent fall in production of the group's garment division and nearly 50 percent in fabrics division.
"We now run business, just to keep our hope alive for a better gas supply soon,” the Purbani boss said.
And the consequences of energy crunch are some odds like labour unrest in the readymade garment sector, which sometimes fails to maintain lead-time.
Missing the international buyers' set lead-time means additional expenses for air shipment and overtime pay bills for workers to ensure timely production and delivery of apparels, Bakhtiar Ahmed Khan elaborates.
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