CNG dealers challenge blackmailing, theft charges

Say they are paying advance tax of 26 per cent on sales.


Express January 05, 2012

HYDERABAD: Compressed natural gas (CNG) dealers have reacted sharply to the allegations of blackmailing, theft and profiteering and asked the government to either retract or prove the charges.

Leaders of the Sindh CNG Association have demanded resignation of Petroleum Minister Dr Asim Hussain if he fails to prove the allegations.

A few days ago, Hussain accused the CNG dealers of blackmailing the people by staging strikes and maximising profits at the cost of public interest. He also blamed the dealers for not following safety measures prescribed by the government.

“We are paying advance tax of 26 per cent on sales and 4 per cent on income but we are being blamed for tax evasion,” the association’s Vice-President, Colonel (Retd) Dost Muhammad Chandio, said at a press conference on Thursday.

He said CNG stations made an advance payment to the Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC) for gas they consumed every month and rejected the claim that they were stealing gas from the system.

SSGC supplies about 8 per cent of its total stock of around 1,100 million cubic feet of gas per day (mmcfd) to 619 CNG stations in Sindh and Balochistan, according to the company’s spokesman Inayatullah Ismail.

CNG Association General Secretary Farooq Memon alleged that the gas crisis had been deliberately created to forge national consensus on switching to more expensive options. He accused the petroleum minister of paving the way for the import of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) as a substitute for CNG.

“Some LPG shipments of a few influential persons are already at the Karachi Port, awaiting offloading,” he alleged.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 6th, 2012.

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