ISLAMABAD, May 19: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has taken up the issue of over-billing and unaccounted for gas by the Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL), senior NAB officials told Dawn on Tuesday.

According to them, the case has been taken up in view of increasing complaints by consumers about inflated or estimated billing in Punjab and the Frontier region.

They said that the current year’s unaccounted for gas estimates were Rs12 billion as against last year’s Rs14 billion.

The case was sent to NAB by the Standing Committee of the Senate on Petroleum after the Jhelum Chamber of Commerce and Industry wrote to the committee chairman last month, inviting his attention to excess billing and the issue of unaccounted for gas.

The letter said: “The SNGPL has over-billed its consumers to the tune of millions of rupees in 2010 and the practice is being done since 2007-2008 when the auditors discovered that SNGPL has over-billed its consumers to the tune of Rs1.4 billion.”

The committee was informed that Rs1.4 billion worth of over-billing was also separately pointed out by the Auditor General of Pakistan. The Jhelum chamber accused the SNGPL officials of being involved in corruption.

The FIA recently raised the issue of gas theft by the SNGPL staff, but it was told that the accused were not employees of the department.

A report submitted to the standing committee established that four out of the six accused were permanent employees of the SNGPL.