Dr Faizullah Abbasi, Managing Director, Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC) has said that the entire workforce of the company is committed towards taking on the challenge of unaccounted for gas (UFG) head-on, adding that an out-of-the-box approach is imperative to curb the losses.
In an all-encompassing presentation to the company's senior management, regional, zonal and sub-zonal managers on January 29, 2011, Dr Abbasi focused on the achievements the company has made over the last one year, challenges it is confronted with and new organisational trends taken during the period to reinvigorate the company along profitable and efficient lines.
He reiterated that while SSGC made impressive profits of rupees 4.4 billion in 2009-10, a repeat of this performance is only possible if every SSGC employee rises to the myriad challenges that confront the company today. MD SSGC dilated on the extensive bottom-up organisational restructuring plan developed last year and reiterated that the challenge now lies in implementing the plan and in doing so, ensuring effective control, operational efficiency and accountability for the primary objective of pinning down UFG.
In order to rationalise the plan, two business operations divisions were created, one each for northern and southern locations of the company's franchise areas with two deputy managing directors as its respective heads.
He suggested unification of customer relations, billing and distribution functions, proper utilisation of data for trend analysis and decision making, identification and quantification of thefts as some of the new approaches for tackling UFG.
He said that with the assistance of a US $200 million loan from World Bank (WB), SSGC is committed towards successfully implementing WB's Natural Gas Efficiency Project as part of an ambitious yet attainable five-year UFG plan. Under this project, SSGC will replace approximately 5,750 km distribution pipeline (excluding supply main) along-with overhead and underground leak survey and rectification of 1.6 million customers and about 18,700 km of network, he elaborated. He congratulated the SSGC team that drafted proposal of the plan for WB's consideration.
The presentation also focused on a number of other achievements of SSGC during the past one year, including inking of two agreements worth rupees two billion with government of Sindh for gasification of towns and villages of Sindh, and expeditious implementation of LPG-air mix plants for providing gas to the remote areas of Sindh and Balochistan.
Dr Abbasi stressed that concerned SSGC officials must focus on ensuring efficient and profitable operations of these air mix plants. He disclosed that the company's meter manufacturing plant has been focusing on adoption of new Pakistan-specific V3 meters and development of in-house smart meters.
Giving a general overview of the company's achievements, MD SSGC said that the company has set up a Remedial Management Unit (RMU) to deal with overdue receivable and payable amount of large industrial customers such as KESC. He said that despite the fact that receivables with KESC have ballooned to rupees25 billion, SSGC remains committed towards providing it maximum gas supply to give Karachites relief from power outages.
He informed that SSGC regularly takes industries and trade bodies into confidence on a number of gas-related issues, adding that a working relationship between the two is important for keeping the wheel of industrialisation moving.
Dr Abbasi said that SSGC must focus on building best human resource (HR) practices through implementation of an in-house talent hunt programme, bridging strong disconnect between HR departments and line departments, need evaluation of human resources and increasing focus on training and development. He stressed that SSGC must work towards becoming a learning organisation.
He informed that senior management of the company has been conducting work-out sessions with the grass-root level staff to encourage them to discuss operational issues relating to meter reading, billing and related functions. He said that the objective of these sessions is to identify anomalies and take immediate corrective actions. He congratulated the transmission teams for playing a major role in implementing flood relief efforts in Sindh and Balochistan as well as timely intervention in saving Shikarpur from inundation.-PR