QUETTA: Residents of Quetta and some other parts of Balochistan have been facing hardships for the past month because of low pressure or suspension of gas supply at a time when temperature at some places has dropped to minus seven degrees Centigrade.

At a time when people need to warm their homes by using gas heaters, the Sui Southern Gas Company has suspended supply from Zarghoon Gas Field to Quetta because of repair work on a pipeline and reduced supply from the Sui gas plant citing a fire incident at the plant.

According to medical practitioners this correspondent talked to, people in large numbers have been visiting hospitals with conditions caused by extreme chilly weather.

“Most patients are women, children and the elderly. They come with complaints of fever, cold, influenza and pneumonia,” the doctors said. They quoted patients as having told the doctors that they had been hit by cold because heating system in their homes had been rendered non-functional in absence of gas supply.

“Our houses have become cold storages due to suspension of gas supply and we do not have any alternative heating system,” said Qazi Younis, a banker living in Jinnah Town.

Reports coming from Pishin, Ziarat, Mastung, Mangochar and Kalat said that people were facing extreme difficulties owing to non-availability of gas in their areas. “There is no gas in Kalat town where temperature has dropped to minus nine degrees Centigrade,” one Mohammad Anwar said.

The SSGC officials on their part said that gas supply had been reduced from Sui because a fire broke out in the purification plant of the Pakistan Petroleum Limited in Sui which left the plant inoperative .

The repair work on the damaged purification plant has been launched and it would be completed in next 48 hours. “We are providing gas to Quetta through alternative arrangements,” a senior SSGC official claimed.

Published in Dawn December 22th , 2014