Winter warming: CNG stations shutdown in Swat

Move taken after district admin insisted on eight-hour-long closures.

MINGORA:

The Swat CNG Association announced the closure of all CNG stations on Thursday with immediate effect after failing to negotiate with the district administration which wanted stations to be closed for eight out of 24 hours daily. As inadvertent beneficiaries of uninterrupted gas, locals welcomed the move to close all CNG stations in Swat indefinitely.

Speaking to the media, Swat CNG Association president Haji Tahir Khan said they not only kept their stations closed for eight hours following the district administration’s orders, but then the Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL) deliberately suspended the gas supply to their stations.

“Our valuable machinery is lying idle due to the suspension of gas and low pressure. So, we announced the closure of all CNG Stations until the fulfillment of our demands,” Khan said.

“Swat is treated like a step-mother; Abbottabad is also located at an extreme point of high altitude, but there is no gas suspension due to low pressure there,” he added. He said they raised the matter with Assistant Commissioner Ashfaq Khan and also visited the responsible officials, but the efforts were in vain.

On the other hand, closure of the CNG stations brought good news to domestic consumers as it meant an uninterrupted supply of gas.

“We have not seen such a gas supply in winter before as a large number of CNG stations have been set up in Mingora. We not only cooked food with Sui gas but we also used the gas for heating purposes,” Akbar Said, a resident of Saidu Sharif, told The Express Tribune. He demanded the government must close all the CNG stations in winter.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 2^nd, 2014.