Gas shortfall another injustice committed by Centre against Sindh: Sharjeel

The shortage of natural gas being faced by the households and industries of Sindh is the continuation of the injustices that have been committed by the Centre against the province.

Sindh Senior Minister for Information and Transport Sharjeel Inam Memon made this remark on Friday while taking part in a general discussion in the Sindh Assembly on an adjournment motion moved by Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) legislator Heer Ismail Soho to discuss the persisting gas shortfall in the province during the ongoing winter season.

Memon told the House that natural gas should be supplied to the gas-producing province in the country on a priority basis as per the Constitution. He said the federal government was obliged to act upon the Constitution.

He lamented that households in the cities of the province had been deprived of natural gas whereas earlier, the residents of the urban areas of Sindh fully relied upon gas for cooking and other fuel needs.

He said certain parts of the province had been altogether deprived of gas supply. The information minister also decried the fact that certain areas of Sindh had been facing hours-long power load-shedding on a daily basis.

He told the House that gas utilities were responsible for improving the gas supply infrastructure to serve their customers in the best possible manner. He said a motion regarding curtailment of gas supply after its passage from the House would be sent to the federal government for implementation.

Memon also appealed to lawmakers belonging to the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P), which is a coalition partner in the federal government, to present Sindh’s case in this regard before the relevant authorities in Islamabad.

Speaking on her adjournment motion, Soho said that households in the province should not face gas shortfall when Sindh accounted for 61 per cent of natural gas produced in the province.

She lamented that school-going children had to leave their homes without having breakfast in the morning due to gas shortfall. The PPP MPA also urged the energy sector companies to give preference to people from local communities for jobs in their operational areas.

She said the gas needs of Sindh should be fulfilled on a priority basis in accordance with the Constitution. Meanwhile, responding to a call attention notice, Memon told the House that the provincial government had spent billions of rupees to procure services of foreign companies for carrying out the essential waste disposal work in Karachi.

He said the Sindh Solid Waste Management Board had been fully functional. He claimed that waste collection and disposal work had improved in the city. Memon told the concerned lawmakers that trash was being quickly lifted from different parts of the city and timely disposed of at the designated landfill sites in the outskirts of Karachi.

He added that the monthly financial support for every union committee in the province had been increased from Rs500,000 to Rs1.2 million to increase their capacity to resolve the municipal problems in their jurisdictions.