Gas crisis continues in Peshawar

PESHAWAR: Natural gas crisis continued to hit many parts of the provincial capital city of Peshawar for 12th consecutive day on Friday as gas was yet to restored to them.

Thousands of Peshawarites have been suffering as natural gas suspended to several parts of the city for the past two weeks couldn’t be restored.

The residents of Peshawar cantonment, including Askari-II, Super Market, Gulberg, Rafiq Lane, Kohati Gate, Wazirbagh Road, etc complained that gas to their areas was suddenly suspended and they thought it would be a normal load-shedding and would be restored after some time.

However, they were disappointed when the gas supply was not restored in two weeks.

“I have been living in Askari-II since 1993 and I never ever seen such a serious gas outage in my life. Yes, we do face severe gas outage and extremely low pressure from November to February but this time we never availed the gas,” a retired military officer complained.

Pleading anonymity, he said they had been depending on LPG cylinders, which are very expensive and difficult to fill regularly. Another retired security officer, Amin Khan, said they were not able to understand why gas had suddenly disappeared.

“I do see it a sheer negligence or failure of the relevant department that a posh area of Peshawar cantonment and its neighbourhoods are without the gas facility for two weeks and nobody bothers. In our colony, there are elderly people who can’t afford to go to the market and get their cylinders filled with LPG,” he said.

Besides the Peshawar cantonment, the residents of Garhi Qamardin and other places on Kohat Road also complained about the lack of natural gas.

According to them, gas supply had to their areas had been stopped a few weeks ago and could not be restored.

They said that gas supply with low pressure is restored to them for few minutes in the evening and afternoon.

An official of the Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL) told The News that their teams were working on the pipeline to identify a fault that has disrupted gas supply to their valued consumers.

“Since our consumers in Askari-II and elsewhere in Peshawar cantonment are very cooperative and paying 100 per cent bills, it is our top priority to restore gas supply to them as earlier as possible. However, I can’t comment about the issue to our consumers on Kohat Road as we are facing problems there in bill payment,” he explained.