Prolonged gas load-shedding: CNG Association to stage sit-in on January 4

All Pakistan CNG Association o Friday announced that it will stage protest demonstration and sit-in against prolonged gas load-shedding on January 4, 2011, in front of Parliament House. Chairman, all Pakistan CNG Association Ghiyas Abdullah Paracha said this while talking to media.
He said the CNG Association tried to resolve the issue through negotiations with relevant authorities, however, they are making promises sans taking any solid step to resolve the issue. He said everybody knows the country has sufficient gas reservoirs and there is no gas crisis however poor policy and mismanagement of authorities concerned are responsible for the prevailing situation.
According to the law and agreements, it is binding on government to ensure provision of gas to domestic consumers and CNG sector for the whole year, while industry including, fertilisers manufacturers, captive power and cement has nine months agreements, as they have alternate options to continue their production in the three winter months.
CNG pays highest tariff ie Rs 503 per mmbtu, while fertiliser pays Rs 102 per mmbtu, power sector Rs 252 per mmbtu, captive power Rs 383 per mmbtu and industries Rs 382 per mmbtu. If the government provides gas to these sectors it will suffer billions of rupees loss. That is why their agreements are for 9 months period and Government closes down their gas supply according to the preference list to these sectors. But now the government has changed its priorities and in 2009 an unfair and unjust decision of changing policy was taken and all the gas was diverted towards industry, power, captive power, and urea, which resulted in unavailability & load shedding to the domestic consumers and CNG stations.
Industrialists are burning huge quantity of gas, while common men sleep without dinner, which forced us to go for protest demonstration and sit-in in front of Parliament House to bring into the notice of ruling junta the miseries being faced by common men. Our demand is that to provide gas to domestic consumers first and then to industrial sector.