MINGORA: The residents of Gul Kada, Saidu Sharif, Mingora and other areas here on Sunday threatened to launch a protest movement against the prolonged gas loadshedding.

They said that they faced many problems owing to unannounced and prolonged gas loadshedding in their areas. “It is strange that once the winter season begins, the gas loadshedding is started automatically in our area that exceeds 12 hours these days,” said Sajjad Ali, a resident of College Colony in Saidu Sharif.

He said that the residents of the area faced difficulties in cooking food owing to loadshedding of gas at daytime.

The residents said that observing unannounced and unscheduled gas loadshedding was violation of the consumer laws. “Supply of gas is suspended early in the morning. It remains suspended till late night so we can neither prepare breakfast, nor lunch and dinner,” said Samina Bibi, a resident of Gulkada.

She said that though the LPG gas was expensive yet they bought it in compulsion.

The local people said that gas outages, particularly in the morning troubled the students, who had to go to their institutions without having proper breakfast.

“For the last 15 days, I have not taken breakfast because every morning when I get up my mother tells me that preparation of breakfast will take longer time because of gas loadshedding. Therefore, I go to school without having breakfast,” said Haroon Khan, a resident of Rang Mohallah.

They said that number of the gas filling stations was increasing in the area where gas was available 24 hours while the domestic consumers were facing problems.

“During the previous winter, the district administration would suspend gas supply to filling stations from early morning till 10pm daily to facilitate domestic consumers. This winter, the commercial users get 24-hour gas supply and domestic consumers face problems,” said Akabar Ali, a civil society member.

The residents threatened to launch a protest on Friday if SNGPL and the district administration did not resolve their issue.

“We will not only stage protest walks but will also block the major roads in Mingora.

Published in Dawn, November 19th, 2018