KARACHI: Federal Energy Minister Omar Ayub Khan on Friday insisted that the Sindh government itself was responsible for shortage of gas claiming that inaction by the provincial authorities was responsible for shortage of gas supply to the second most populated province of the country.

Addressing a reception hosted by Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf vice president in Sindh and parliamentary leader of his party in Sindh Assembly Haleem Adil Sheikh, the federal minister said that the Sindh government had not given right of way for gas pipeline which had been resulting in gas shortage.

Special assistant to the prime minister on petroleum Nadeem Babar also accompanied him.

PTI MPAs and leaders, including Dr Saeed Afridi, Bilal Ghaffar, Abbas Jaffri, Kareem Bux Gabol, Shehzad Farooqui, Rabistan Khan, Shahnawaz Jadoon, Adeel Ahmed, Sanjay Gangwani, Mehmood Molvi, Ashraf Qureshi, Naeem Adil Sheikh, Hunaid Lakhani, Arshad Javed and others were also present on the occasion.

“By 2025, a total of 80,000 megawatt energy would be added to the system,” claimed the federal minister.

“It is totally wrong impression that the gas share of Sindh is being given to other provinces. Sindh produced 2,000-mmcf of gas and the provincial government of the Pakistan Peoples Party in its tenure had given only 500mmcf share to the Sui Northern gas company.

“From the same amount of supply, 250mmcf of gas is taken back for supply to power plants. Over the past 10 years, no new gas well has been explored and the PPP and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) are responsible for this. However, after almost a decade, we have started the process of digging new wells for discovery of fresh gas reserves,” added Mr Khan.

He said had the Sindh government given the right of way in a timely manner, the gas pressure problems would not have emerged in the province. He blamed the Sindh government for not cooperating with the federal government.

However, he claimed that the PTI government in the centre would continue serving the people across Pakistan without any biases and a wind power plant of 200MW would be installed in Sindh very soon.

“The people of Karachi have elected the PTI and Prime Minister Imran Khan fully supports the genuine demands of Karachiites. We are at war against corruption and it will continue. Following the same agenda, we are also taking action against electricity theft,” added the federal minister.

Earlier, Haleem Adil Sheikh alleged that the Sindh government was misguiding the people of the province while claiming that the gas of Sindh was supplied to other provinces.

“This is baseless and sheer propaganda. The fact is that the government of Sindh is not serious to resolve the basic issues of masses. It is only busy in blame game. The PTI government in centre and its elected representatives in Sindh are making joint efforts and soon results of these efforts in energy sector would emerge,” he added.

Published in Dawn, February 8th, 2020