“We cannot prepare food as the gas pressure is very low,” said Naveed Siddiqi, who lives in Township. “We cannot perform ablutions for prayers as there is no water. We cannot iron our clothes as there is no electricity.”
Residents of Rehmanpura, Ichhra, Faisal Town and Mughalpura also had trouble preparing food for the start and end of the fast on Thursday.
“It feels like we’re living in the Stone Ages. We don’t have fire, we don’t have water. We are living in the dark,” said businessman Abid Mehmood, a resident of Johar Town.
Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL) officials said there were several reasons for the low gas pressure. First, Sehar and Iftar are peak demand times.
Second, because of a petrol shortage in the city on August 16, SNGPL did not pursue its usual practice of suspending supply to CNG stations for one day a week.
“The company has to supply public transport and so we decided to waive the one-day closures till August 31, but now people are suffering because of this,” one official said.
A third reason, officials said, was that SNGPL was, for the time being, giving uninterrupted supply to industries that were struggling for one flood-related reason or another.
SNGPL Lahore General Manager Najeeb Ghazi said domestic users had priority over commercial consumers when it came to gas supply.
Meanwhile, several neighbourhoods continued to suffer unscheduled blackouts, some for three hours at a time. The power outages also resulted in water supply problems.
The Township sub divisional officer of the Water and Sanitation Agency said they had to turn off tube wells as running them during outages could damage their turbines. He said people should use less water.
“The cost of utilities has increased threefold but all we get are lame excuses,” said Mehmood.
Published in The Express Tribune, August 20th, 2010.
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