Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry (ICCI) has shown great concerns over the re-start of unscheduled load shedding, which is adversely affecting business & industrial activities apart from making life miserable for people and called upon the government to take urgent measures to overcome this problem.

Mr.Zahid Maqbool, President, Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry (ICCI) said that consequent upon the energy summit in April this year, there was some respite in power outages due to which businesses activities had started to recover from bad patch.

However, the re-start of unscheduled load shedding has again created concerns in businessmen about sustainability of their businesses and government should pay immediate attention to improve the situation so that entrepreneurs may not lose their confidence.

He said the unscheduled load-shedding in the past had also caused closure of large number of industrial units rendering thousands of workers jobless and if the situation was not improved, country will lose more industries, exports, revenue and jobs.

He said that former federal minister Dr. Atta ur Rehman has recently disclosed that country has the potential to generate 10 to 15 thousand MW hydro electricity from the areas of Kaiti Bandar, Gharo and Hyderabad and urged the government to take initiatives to exploit this energy potential.

He said Pakistan can also generate sufficient energy by using Methane and solar energy potential and added that government should make proper plans to utilize these sources for energy production.

Mr.Zahid Maqbool domestic and foreign investment cannot be promoted without ensuring uninterrupted power supply and private sector should be involved in energy generation process so that the country could get rid of this chronic issue once for all.