July 7, 2002	Sunday	Rabi-us-Sani 25,1423

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PESHAWAR, July 6: The SNGPL will give connections to 100,000 domestic, 2,500 commercial and 130 factory consumers in the NWFP  and Punjab during the current financial year, SNGPL Managing Director Abdur Rashid Lone said on Saturday.

Speaking at a press conference, he said the SNGPL would establish three customer service centres in the city and a head office at Hayatabad township.

Speaking at a press conference, he said: “We have also selected sites for the SNGPL offices in Kohat and Swat and by the end of the year, the construction will be initiated.”

These offices and customer service centres would receive bill payments, applications for connections and issue gas bills to consumers, the MD said.

“There will be a one-window operation to save the customers’ time,” he said.

He said that the SNGPL had decided to start mobile service for quick  redress to public complaints. The mobile teams would extend service on receiving phone call on 119, he said.

Natural gas supply would be increased by 150 per cent after completion of projects at Sawan (Khairpur) and Zamzama (Dadu) by December 2003 with a cost of Rs13 billion, he said.

He said that through those projects, five power stations, at Kot Adu, Muzaffargarh, Multan, Faisalabad and Rousch (Khanewal), being run on furnace oil, would be provided natural gas and the government would save $500 million foreign exchange.

There would also be a positive impact on the environment after switching over from furnace oil to natural gas by the power stations, he said and opined: “The Water and Power Development Authority may reduce  the price of electricity when it starts using the economical natural gas in the power stations.”

The SNGPL had provided gas supply to Swat, he said and added: “We have sent the proposal to the government for supplying Sui gas to residents of Swabi district and hope the plan would be approved soon.”

The SNGPL had also proposed to the government to supply natural gas to suburbs of Kohat and Mardan, he said.

To promote industry, the SNGPL had decided to abolish consumer meter station charges and now the owner of the industry could get the gas facility after paying Rs75,000 as pipeline charges.

For the current year, the SNGPL had approved 15,000 domestic, 200 commercial and 10 industrial connections in the Frontier province, he said.