Over 250,000 applications for new gas connections are lying unattended at the head office of the Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL) for the last two months, gas officials told Pakistan Today on Monday. The applications were submitted manually before May 2010 at SNGPL offices in areas including Shahdara, Harbanspura, Okara, Sahiwal and Kasur. In June 2010 the company introduced a computerised method of filing applications. However, the manually-filed applications were not entertained and remained unattended in the respective offices.
Some two months ago, the company decided to move all the records from regional offices to the head office in order to end the backlog and issue demand notices to the applicants. Despite a lapse of two months, the SNGPL authorities are not interested in attending these applications. Sources said the staff at regional offices had been telling the applicants that their requests for gas connection had been sent to the head office and that they could not do anything about it. The applicants who proceed to contact the head office are told that their requests were under process, sources said. According to official standards, the SNGPL issues a demand note six weeks after receiving the application and tells the applicant to deposit the required amount in the bank. After receiving the money, the gas connection is approved and the company is bound to install a gas metre at the consumer’s premises.
However, this procedure is not followed and the consumers are waiting for more than one and a half years. An SNGPL official confidently said that there was no chance of entertaining the pending applications, adding that since the company was not giving new connections, the applications would not be possibly addressed in the coming months. The recently introduced computerised system for filing applications is not working properly either. The applicants have to wait for hours to file a single application. “The computer system seldom works and only a few applications are accepted,” said another gas official, adding that the computerisation of record had created problems for the consumers. Mukhar Ali, a consumer who claimed to have been visiting the SNGPL office at Multan Road for one month to file an application, also appeared disgruntled with the computerised system at the gas company. “Often the SNGPL employees say that the computer is not working, therefore the application cannot be accepted. When the system starts to work, office time ends,” he said, adding that freelance agents were demanding Rs 2,000 from the consumers to file an application with the SNGPL. The public relations officer of the SNGPL was not available for comments.