HYDERABAD:The President Hyderabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (HCCI) Adeel Siddiqui has rejected enhancement in water
tariff for industries and said that such decisions should be reviewed in view of the present economic conditions.
In a statement issued here on Sunday, he said that the Sindh Industrial Trading Estate (SITE) has raised fixed water supply charges at Rs150 per 1000 gallons and that in the absence of an effluent treatment plant (ETP) in the SITE area. He said that such notification was an injustice with the industrialists.
The HCCI president said that the SITE had exceeded its jurisdiction considering the fact that the decision was taken without approval of SITE’s Board of Directors (BoD). Therefore, the notification in question has no legal veracity, he said and added that the SITE area was facing water shortages for long time forcing the industrialists to pay heavily to buy water for their units.
He maintained that sewerage and drainage lines were replete with heaps of garbage thus choking the entire drainage of the SITE area.
He said the rainwater always enters industries and affects expensive industrial equipment worth billions of rupees.
Adeel Siddiqui urged the Sindh Secretary of Industries and Managing Director SITE to pay serious attention to Hyderabad’s industrialists and withdraw such a notification.
The HCCI president said that collective efforts should be taken to promote industrial activity and that government and other stakeholders should play their role instead of imposing new taxes on industrialists to multiply their problems. He said such policies would affect industrial activities even further.