Gas misery

So in a few weeks, a few months, we seem to have moved back centuries. In households across the country people are forced to cook what food they can on wood – acquiring pieces of timber from any source they can find. For poor people who receive high bills for gas, but not the commodity itself, life has become almost impossible. Tearful mothers speak of hungry kids seeking breakfast that is not available, because there are no stoves to cook it on. And in places like Quetta, people speak of the very real possibility of literally freezing to death.

The fact is that this situation has been created by sheer incompetence and possible indifference to people. The government had obviously known that there would be a demand for gas in winter. Despite this, it did not put in bids at a time when prices were low and, apart from the two terminals built by the previous government, no additional terminals have been built to store gas. SAPM Nadeem Babar has consistently been misrepresenting the situation and is now insisting that 12 cargoes ordered in January will come in and that the 14 cargoes he had spoken of before had never been ordered and were simply added on because the government always sought more than it needed so that it could determine what to buy on the basis of prices. Previously he had also blamed the Sindh government for not building the required pipeline. This pipeline has now been completed due to private mediation and a request to the Sindh government. But it is the situation of people that is most heart-breaking. Already struggling through the Covid-19 pandemic, when jobs are low and wages hard to find, people now must buy expensive ‘roti’ from the ‘tandoor’ and purchase food from outside their homes. The situation is an impossible one and households around the country are facing the calamity through whatever means they can.

There has been no response from the government as to what is being done to tackle this crisis. The price of gas cylinders is high and adds to the toll on households already burdened by high prices. Industry too has suffered and the textiles sector which had grown beyond that of India, with a 14 percent increase in the last months, now says it cannot sustain the growth if there is no gas and the promises made by the government in this respect are not kept. We are in a state of calamity once again, placing people in a terrible situation – without the ability to cook food, heat their homes, or even obtain hot water for washing and bathing in the freezing cold of the northern winter.