November 8, 2003	Saturday	Ramazan 12, 1424

KARACHI, Nov 7: Sui Southern Gas Company Limited (SSGC) has awarded the stub collection and data processing mandate to Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) for covering Sindh and Balochistan.

An agreement for awarding the contract was signed here at SSGC’s head office on Friday by SSGC managing director Munawwar Baseer Ahmed and SCB chief executive officer Badar Kazmi.

SSGC had raised a tender for this mandate which the SCB had won through a competitive bidding process. SCB would be working closely with its project partner NIFT to execute this stub collection mandate. NIFT is a bulk processing company and is the sole company authorized by the SBP to conduct cheque processing in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad, says a press release.

Under the stub collection mandate, SCB will collect SSGC’s gas bill stubs from all collecting banks in Karachi, Hyderabad, interior Sindh, Quetta and Balochistan (except Habib Bank Limited) for a period of two years. SCB will then process stubs, perform account reconciliation, and provide MIS in pre-agreed formats through soft files. The implementation is being done in phases to ensure a smooth rollout starting with Karachi on November 15.

Additionally, SCB and SSGC will be jointly working on promoting the drop box mechanism for payment of gas bills via cheque; approximately 50 drop boxes will be placed in Karachi at prominent locations to extend convenience to customers. An incentive scheme is also being launched jointly to promote this campaign with the slogan “Na Qatar, Na Intizaar”.