Employees from 962 Beijing-based industrial enterprises have gone on their paid leave this week as the Chinese capital city entered the hottest time of the year. Altogether 4,689 enterprises will give week-long summer vacations for their employees in the coming four weeks, a spokesman with the Beijing municipal government said.

These enterprises are allowed to adopt a temporary six-day week schedule in the coming fall to compensate the holidays taken and catch up with their original production plan, Xinhua news agency reported.

The spokesman said the summer leave is designed to ease a power crunch, which has intensified the effect of heatwave in the city and other parts of China in recent weeks.

Beijing Electric Power Corp has predicted that this will ease Beijing's power supply bottleneck by 280,000 kilowatts when 58,817 corporate users in this way minimise power consumption at peak hours.

The city has raised power price for industries from July 1 as scorching temperatures drove up energy demand. The price rise affects at least 50,000 companies.

The State Electricity Dispatching Centre has predicted China is to suffer the worst energy crunch in two decades this summer and many cities have limited power use by big consumers and told factories to shut down or introduce night shifts to cut electricity demand.

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