A large number of industrialists on Friday staged a demonstration near Governor House to protest against non-availability of gas in the Site industrial area. Around 600 industrialists and labourers also staged a protest sit-in near the Governor House from 10am to 1pm. The protesters, led by the Site Association of Industry's (SAI) president Muhammad Jawed Bilwani, chanted slogans against Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC) and demanded of the government to take appropriate measures to ensure uninterrupted gas supply to industrial units.
Accusing the SSGC officials of not taking interest in restoring normal gas supply to the industrial units of the Site industrial area, the protesters urged the government to take immediate notice of non-availability of gas, ensuring gas supply with full pressure. Deploring that off and on drop in gas pressure was badly hampering industrial production, they said that persisting low gas pressure has made it impossible for them to honour their local commitments as well as to meet their export targets.
The SAI chief told newsmen that whenever textile industries come to halt in the wake of non-availability of gas, its machineries take around five hours to restart production. Reiterating his demand that CNG stations should not be supplied gas from the pipeline which was laid exclusively for industries, Bilwani hoped that the government will ensure uninterrupted gas supply to industries so as to facilitate them in meeting their export targets.
"Government must realise that no industry can survive without gas and water," he said and warned that if the government failed to take corrective measures, industrialists would be compelled to shutdown their industrial units and such a situation will not only lead to flight of capital but would also render thousands of labourers jobless.
At the outset, Bilwani said that it was beyond one's comprehension that why industries of Sindh were deprived of natural gas when the province was producing 70 per cent natural gas. He demanded of Sindh governor and chief minister to intervene into the matter to keep industries of the Site industrial area running. Earlier, Businessmen Group's chairman and a former president of KCCI, Siraj Kassam Teli, announced that industrialists will have no choice but to stage protest demonstration in front of SSGC office, if the issue of low gas pressure continued to persist in the Site industrial area.
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