‘Naan Bais’ protest against inflated gas bills

Rawalpindi: The ‘Naan Bai’ Welfare Association staged a protest demonstration outside the office of Sui Northern Gas Pipeline, on Monday morning to express their resentment over issuance of inflated gas bills to them by the company.

Scores of people belonging to ‘Naan Bai’ Welfare Association fully participated in the demonstration, carrying placards and banners besides raising slogans against SNGPL officials.

The chairman of the Association, Malik Saleem Awan and President Shafique Qureshi along with other demonstrators while showing their gas bills alleged the SNGPL has done injustice by issuing inflated bills to them varying from Rs39,000 to Rs1 lac for the month of March, 2018.

According to them, the tariff of gas consumed by them is very low, however, the company in the bill has also claimed LNG charges of Qatari Gas from the Naan Bai workers community. This move adopted by the SNGPL reflects economic killing of our community people, they claimed. The inclusion of LNG charges in gas bills is not acceptable to them.

Saleem Khan and Shafique Qureshi told that the Naan Bai people do not earn much from their business and charge only Rs7 as amount of per Roti. From this income they find hard to meet their daily and monthly expenses. There is no other source of income to generate other than our own business. Under these circumstances, the SNGPL has claimed huge amounts in the gas bills which is beyond our limit to pay.

The representatives of the Association have made a fervent appeal to the Prime Minister, related Petroleum and Gas Minister, Chairman of SNGPL to take immediate notice of what they termed high handedness done with them by the company while serving inflated bills. In other case, they threatened to launch a protest movement which will include complete closure of ‘Naan Bai’ shops all over the Rawalpindi areas. Though we would suffer financially at the same time, the people would also face problems with the closure of ‘Naan Bai’ shops, Saleem Khan claimed.

However, Engineer, SNGPL, Shahzad Saleem while reacting to the allegations of the representatives of the Naan Bai Association and their community during their demonstration agreed of claiming LNG charges against Qatari gas in the gas bills from them. The engineer cleared that through an agreement the SNGPL had directed the Association members and representatives to consume gas under a limit per day. However, without caring the ‘Naan Bais’ have crossed the limits of consuming gas during the month of March.

Shahzad Saleem also did not refute to the allegations that the company has claimed LNG charges as well in the gas bills. However, on this he did not comment further that why LNG charges are being claimed from ‘Naan Bai’ community and commercial users. Moreover, the engineer cleared that if the ‘Naan Bai’ community fails to pay amount of their gas bills, then the SNGPL would disconnect connections and remove their gas meters as well.