KHANEWAL, Sept 3: Con-sumers in the entire Khanewal district have been facing tormenting time since January last as the Sui Northern Gas Pipelines (SNGPL), Multan region, has fallen down on its job of issuing monthly bills to them.

It is learnt that the consumers in Khanewal and its suburban areas, who got new gas connection in the months of January and February, are constantly plead their case to the SNGPL office, but to no avail.

Consumers are worried about the piling up of the bill amount which will cause a financial burden on them.

When contacted, Khanewal engineering staff in-charge Abdul Sattar Chaudhry said that new consumers received the bills in four months time from the date of getting new connections.

“We send detail of new connections to the Multan office from where it is forwarded to the Lahore office for the computerized billing and this process takes up to four months” he said.

He further said that the shortage of staff was another reason for the delay in issuing bills to consumers.

Deputy Chief Engineer (DCE), Multan region, Ijaz Ahmad said that an inspection-cum-monitoring team had been constituted to sort out the matter.

“Now we do not send detail of new cases to Lahore because we have installed our own computerized system in Multan. All the bills are compiled and issued by the regional office and not by the Lahore office”, he said.