Residents protest against gas load-shedding

It takes too long to cook food, complain housewives.

SUKKUR: Residents of Ayub Gate and Takkar Muhalla, including women and children, staged a demonstration and a sit-in at Station Road, Sukkur on Friday to protest against load-shedding and low pressure of gas.

Clutching Sui gas bills, the residents claimed that the gas tariff was continuously being raised while the supply was decreasing. They shouted slogans against the Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC) management and blocked traffic for over an hour.

Talking to the media, the protesters said that the SSGC started gas load-shedding as soon as winter started. The worst is when the gas pressure at meal times gets so low that it takes twice as long to cook food, said one of the protesters, Rasheeda.

“We are being forced to buy cooked food from the market,” claimed another resident, Qayum Kamangar. “This is costing us too much and its not even as good as homemade food!”

When contacted, the zonal manager SSGC Sukkur Fayaz Shaikh told The Express Tribune that the company is compelled to schedule load-shedding because of the extreme cold weather and the heavy fog. “We are not getting the required pressure at our end so we are getting complaints from some of the areas,” he said. The SSGC authority has taken corrective measures in this regard and hopefully the problem of low pressure will come to an end within 24 hours, he added optimistically.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 8^th, 2011.