Government urged to ensure uninterrupted supply to CNG stations

Chairman All Pakistan CNG Forum, Shabbir Sulemanjee has said that the present closure of almost two months is an historic example as the CNG stations in Sindh has never been closed for such a long period.

Speaking at a press conference he said that the current gas load-shedding of CNG stations in Sindh is ultra vires, malign intentions and unconstitutional to the fundamental rights of Article 158 which is "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".

He said SSGC has completely jeopardized the CNG Sector in Sindh having ulterior motives, vested interest and malafide intensions of few people who are misrepresenting the factuals, constitutional law and sectorial priority. As per SSGC, CNG is ranked as the last in the sectorial priority notification issued by the ECC whereby they are wrongly interpreting the true essence of the subject notification.

President of Karachi Transport Ittehad, Irshad Bukhari said that the transporters play a key role in any successful economy of the country but unfortunately we have been treated as a non-resident and enemies of Pakistan.

He said that over Rs 40 billion investment approximately has been made by the public onto the conversion of busses, cars, vans and other private/commercial vehicles.

Upon the instructions and encouragement by the Federal/Provincial Government of Pakistan to promote CNG as the fuel of the masses for reduction in the import bills and environmental pollution, he said that the 70 percent of the transport has been converted onto CNG having no other alternate source of fuel other than CNG, thereby the complete shutdown from December 2019 onwards has caused a huge difficulty for the transporters to manage smooth commutation that is ultimately affecting the general public in large.

The closure of CNG has badly affected the bus drivers, transporters, rickshaw owners, commercial vehicle owners and the public in large who are associated with this budgetary fuel.

The President, Karachi Transport Ittehad along with the CNG stakeholders strongly oppose this unethical and discriminatory closure of CNG stations and warns SSGC to revert back to the earlier load shedding schedule of alternate days, otherwise we will use our fundamental rights to record peaceful protest.-PR