Power outage losses could be huge

Sharjah’s losses during the four-day electricity outage could run up to hundreds of millions of dirhams.

Even a conservative estimate of Sharjah’s GDP by the end of 2008 (Dh71billion) could mean the emirate would have experienced a loss of around Dh500million.

The first breakdown started on Monday and after four days of intermittent outages, near normalcy was restored on Thursday noon.

The breakdown was mostly concentrated in Rolla, Al Khan and other surrounding areas. Sharjah’s industrial areas were the worst affected.

Several other businesses were also severely affected with shops and restaurants closing shutters and factories halting production.

Several restaurants had to throw away their frozen products. Many small cafeterias said they lost almost Dh5,000 daily.

An official of Kanoo machinery said, office staff were temporarily shifted to the Dubai office. “We returned to the Sharjah office only today,” he said.

When asked if there was increasing demand for generators he said, “You cannot start using generators , unless you get a clearance from SEWA. Most people did not expect the problem to become this worse,” he said. “Probably we all will be better prepared for next year,” he added.

In some areas the outage lasted for a very short while. An employee of Rainbow restaurant said they shifted most of their frozen and chiller items into refrigerated vehicles. “The outage lasted just for a few hours,” he said.

Meanwhile among the businesses that were not affected were those located in the SAIF zone. “Last year we had problems, but surprisingly we had uninterrupted power supply so far this year,” said Rahman Malik who works in SAIF Zone.

Most people said they were very upset about the SEWA handled the situation.

“They should have made a statement about the how long the problem would last and what caused the problem. Remaining silent doesn’t solve anything,” said George Koshy a resident of Al Khan.

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