KARACHI: The industrialists have said that the country will suffer irreparable losses if the government fails to persuade the Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC) to maintain full gas pressure in all the industrial estates of the city.
The industrial units in all the seven industrial estates of the city had been continuously suffering from huge production losses due to the frequent drop in gas pressure due to which the industrial units operating on gas or generating power from gas had either stopped operating altogether or they were working under capacity.
They criticized the government for what they said "its failure to manage the ongoing gas crisis", warning the government that the industries could not be run under the present circumstances.
Ismail Suttar, president of the Lasbela Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), has urged the federal government to take the matter up with the SSGC management to have it urgently resolved by taking all the important direct beneficiaries into confidence.
He vehemently denounced the "grim performance of and false statements by the SSGC" over uninterrupted provision of natural gas, as well as smooth monitoring of gas supply to Hub, the only organized industrial area in Balochistan.
Ismail said that fluctuations in gas pressure had distorted production and unnecessarily exacerbated the input cost which had led to expensive exports, and it had become simply impossible to keep the wheels of the industry turning.
Further, the LCCI president said that if boilers stopped functioning as a result of low pressure then entire plants needed to be shut down, depriving the national exchequer of precious revenue.
It has now become a daily routine and specially at this time of the year when normally there were no such issues witnessed previously as the pressure issue was normally witnessed in the three winter months but never in the past have we witnessed low pressure during the summer.
A dejected Ismail Suttar expressed his great resentment over non-responsiveness by the top management of the SSGC on several appointment attempts to discuss the situation.
He said that if the SSGC continued to ignore them, a protest outside the main office of the SSGC might be arranged.
Balochistan, from where the entire Pakistan is supplied with gas, does not receive the same in return which is highly condemnable, sad and unjustified, he said. The President of Korangi Association of Trade and Industry (KATI), Sheikh Umer Rehan, urged the authorities concerned to get the low pressure gas issue in Korangi Industrial Area resolved.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2020
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