The City District Government Karachi (CDGK) is likely to award contracts for the installation of five compressed natural gas (CNG) filling terminals with a view to facilitating the operator of CNG buses in the metropolis.
Talking to Business Recorder here on Friday, the CDGK officials said that these CNG stations would be established at Surjani Town, Shah Latif Town, National Highway near Malir Halt and Gulistan-e-Jauhar near Mosamiat Chawk.
Responding to a query about the opening of the tenders on Saturday before removing hurdles in launching the CNG bus service, which put the CNG bus service under hot water, they said the CNG bus companies, after rewarding the contracts, would be asked to start plying the CNG buses as soon as possible. They said under an agreement, CNG installers would pay land rent, besides sharing their profit with the CDGK under the pre-defined percentage.
The CNG stations would be installed on public-private partnership basis under which the city government would provide the land on rental basis, while the private companies would be making investments and sharing the profit with the CDGK, they said.
Though the CDGK terms and conditions were not unacceptable by some CNG suppliers, the CDGK had, however, received more than 50 applications from reputable CNG installers across the country, said the officials. They said each CNG station would need an investment of around Rs 30 million, making the project costing Rs 150 million. The proposed CNG stations would also provide fuel to the general transport in daytime as the long-awaited CNG buses, with special fuel cylinders needing once a day fill up, would take fuel between midnight to 6 am, the officials said. Officials said that the number of filling stations would be increased as per the demand and performance of the five proposed CNG stations, which would be operated by the staff from the successful bidding companies.
When contacted, Marketing Manager of Global Pakistan, a CNG machine importing company, Raufi, said that the CDGK had not mentioned the capacity of the CNG compressor machinery in request for proposal to set up CNG stations at allocated places, adding that the proposal only emphasised high pressure capacity machinery for making CNG gas. He said that CNG stations were working not more than the capacity of 200 to 400 cubic-meter and this pressure was also placed in the list of high capacity machinery, therefore, the CNG suppliers were interested to win tenders and earn huge profit without estimated investments.
They said if the successful bidder installed 200 to 400 cubic-meter natural gas compressors, the could easily meet their all expenditures, including profit-sharing with the CDGK and land rent. They pointed out that if the suppliers would not install required capacity machines to refuel the CNG buses with more than 1000 pressure machines, the CNG bus companies would face difficulties to continue their services in the city.
When asked why the launching of CNG transport service was delayed, they replied because improper planning and incomplete documentation by Holland and Swede bus companies the launching of the service. Besides, the indifference of the higher-ups to bring the eco-friendly buses, which were stuck up at Dubai port, to the cosmopolitan was the main hurdle to get all buses cleared by the relevant authorities, they said.
Comments
Comments are closed.