By IANS,
Chennai: It’s a loan mela to encourage small time industrial units in Tiruchirapalli to buy gensets, plagued as they are by long power cuts.
It’s the BHEL Small and Medium Industries Association (BHELSIA) that hit upon the idea. “We are in the process of finalising the price of the gensets with a couple of sellers. Once that is over, a loan mela will be organised in the third week of this month,” BHELSIA president Rajappa Rajkumar told IANS.
The association has tied up with the State Bank of India (SBI) and the Tamil Nadu Industrial Investment Corporation (TIIC) for the mela.
He said diesel gensets with a capacity of 3,000 kva or around 20-30 gensets with a capacity of 125-200 kva each and costing around Rs.600,000 are expected to be bought during the mela.
Though it would cost BHELSIA members – steel fabricators for power equipment maker Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd’s (BHEL) boiler division here – around Rs.17 per unit as against the normal power tariff of Rs.5 per unit, Rajkumar said the expense would be worth it.
“Instead of paying the workers for the hours they sit idle due to lack of power, this option works out better,” he said.
While the units will have to put in 20 percent of the gensets cost as their share, they will get 25 percent subsidy from the government.
As power cuts are likely to continue till May, BHELSIA members cannot risk sitting idle what with the other options – looking out for bigger fabricators – available to BHEL, said Rajkumar.
He also said BHELSIA and BHEL are planning to form a committee to look at the viability of setting up a small, gas-based power plant to meet their power needs.
“Gas can be brought through pipeline from Karaikal to Trichy. For our members, the power need will be around 5 MW and for BHEL it will be around 7 MW,” he said.