By;Staff Reporter
KHYBER AGENCY: Over one hundred marble factories in Mulagori that had been producing world standard expensive marbles in Mulagori area of Khyber Agency were closed down to record their protest again the notices served by National Accountability Bureau(NAB) asking them to pay their electricity dues for the last several years.
Owners of the affected marble factories told Daily Times that Tribal Areas Electricity Supply Company (Tesco) had disconnected power supply to their factories in the beginning of August. They said that NAB officials telling them that they were required to pay electricity bills to tune of millions of rupees.
President of all Mulagori factories owners, Himmat Shah Mulagori told Daily Times that 220 marble factories were situated in Mulagori industrial zone. He said Tesco was providing electricity to the half of the factories to operate for few days in a month. They said as per an understanding reached with the local Tesco officials had to ensure continuous power supply of electricity to the operational units.
Himmat Shah Mulagori said that they had made several alternate arrangements for running their marble units but due to lack of resources it failed. He said to low voltage of electricity to the marble factories also suffered the marble factories as they were not able to run all 220 units at a time.
Another owner, Mir Nawaz Mulagori, accused Tesco officials and said that they were regularly pay their monthly power bills. He said they have all the banks receipts of the money paid against the power bills.
“None of the factory in Mulagori area ever defaulted on electricity bills but so many times they were issued bills of the months during which they were not operational due to the agreed “power saving formula” they have with Tesco officials, Nawaz argued.
He said it was immoral that despite they were paying regular bills and producing a world class marble they were issued notices of stern action against them if they failed to deposit the billions of rupees dues.
A local elder Hajj Gul Mulagori said it was not the NAB mandate to take action in any of the tribal Agency. “NAB action of disconnecting power supply to marble units is totally unlawful and we reserve the right to take up the matter with political administration”, Mannan said.
The Mulagori elder said all the marble units’ owners had signed an agreement with the political administration in early 90s. He said through that agreement they were entitled of exemption from all types of taxes.
Another local resident Sabz Ali said 110 marble factories have already closed as per the ‘power saving formula’ to keep running the rest of 110 units to void disconnection of power supply. He said around 6500 factory workers jobs would loss job if electricity supply was restored to their factories.
He said factory owners too were at the risk of incurring monetary loses along with losing their customers and fresh orders from across the country.
Malik Fazle Maullah said that Mulagori White marble was famous throughout Pakistan in some of the European countries. He said they had a large number of buyers in almost all the major cities of the country.
“The supply of this precious stone could be seriously affected if the power supply was not restored forthwith, Fazle Maullah appealed.
