Staff Reporter
Chairman All Pakistan CNG Forum Shabbir Sulemanjee has said that the present closure of CNG Stations in Sindh almost for two months is an historic example as they have never been closed for such a long period before.
The current gas load-shedding of CNG Stations in Sindh is ultra vires, with malign intentions and unconstitutional as Article 158 states, “The Province in which a well head of Natural Gas situated shall have precedence over other parts of Pakistan in meeting the requirements from that well head”. SSGC has completely jeopardized the CNG Sector in Sindh having ulterior motives, vested interest and malafide intensions of few people who are misrepresenting the factual, Constitutional Law and Sectorial Priority. As per SSGC, CNG is ranked as the last in the Sectoral Priority notification issued by the ECC whereby they are wrongly interpreting the true essence of the subject notification. That the Supreme Court of Pakistan vide Judgement in the Human Rights Case No. 14392/2013 passed on 10th December 2013 on Page No. 36 states that “However, as far as Captive Power Plants are concerned, the policy must be revised and without any justification they cannot be allowed supply of gas to produce electricity.
Therefore, the supply of gas to captive power should be revised to a lower priority and not at a subsidized rate”. Mumtaz Ali Jatoi, Chairman Sindh CNG Association, said that the CNG Stations in Sindh are consuming around 60 MMCFD of gas which is less than 2% of the total country’s indigenous Gas Supply. Jatoi said that the present closure is a conspiracy and an ambitious plan of one of the senior representatives of SSGC Management, to make LNG available in Sindh to the CNG Sector. “We believe that there are still shadows and ambiguities on the structure of supplying LNG in terms of the Gas Network Code and SSGC has failed to clarify our concerns on the supply of RLNG despite of some people have shown their expression of interest to SSGC.”
Irshad Bukhari, President of Karachi Transport Ittehad, said that the transporters play a key role in any successful economy of the country unfortunately we have been treated as a non-resident and enemies of Pakistan. He threatened that “We will use our fundamental rights to record peaceful protest like “Bhook Hartal” in front of SSGC Head Office.”
