QUETTA: Members belonging to opposition parties in the Balochistan Assembly have slammed the Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC) over low gas pressure which people in the province are experiencing these days as a cold wave has started hitting the province since the beginning of November.

During a session of the assembly presided over by Deputy Speaker Sardar Babar Musakhail on Tuesday, they demanded that the SSGC’s general manager be summoned in the house for an explanation.

Mr Musakhail also expressed his resentment over the low gas pressure in Balochistan.

Balochistan Awami Party’s member Bushra Rind urged the house to call the SSGC’s general manager for giving an explanation to the house over low gas pressure in the province.

Balochistan National Party’s parliamentary leader Malik Naseer Shahwani said residents in Quetta, including women and children, staged protests and marched from Degree College to Sheikh Zahid Hospital against the low gas pressure, but no government representative took notice of their complaints.

“Only four districts in Balochistan receive natural gas and they are facing low gas pressure at a time when the city has been hit by a cold wave,” Mr Shahwani said.

He rejected a claim of the SSGC’s general manager that directives have been issued to the company’s officials to improve gas pressure in the affected areas.

He slammed the SSGC for issuing inflated bills to poor people of in the province. He said the provincial government should have raised the issue with federal Minister Umar Ayub during his visit to Quetta last week.

Provincial Minister for Public Health Engineering and WASA Haji Noor Mohamamd Dummar submitted a resolution against cutting of trees in the juniper forest of Ziarat where low gas pressure is compelling people to cut old juniper trees to meet their heating needs in freezing temperature.

Published in Dawn, November 13th, 2019