Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC) while not upholding its promise has started 8 hour gas loadshedding to Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM) from last Saturday.
Outstanding bills
Sources informed Profit that PSM was issued a notice by the gas company earlier that the company would disconnect the gas connection of the mills from 22nd of this month if the mills don’t pay the bill amounting to Rs4.6 billion. Intriguingly, from Saturday, before ten days of the final disconnection date, the SSGC started 8 hours gas loadshedding at the mills from 12pm to 8pm daily, which is piling on to the miseries of the loss-making PSE that is passing through it’s worst financial crisis, sources added.
Worsening financial crisis
Since the coke oven battery of the mills is not working, the plants of the mills are being run on natural gas for 16 hours a day, which consumes gas worth Rs400 million a month, and now the total amount of the gas bill due to financial crisis has exacerbated to Rs4.6 billion. ‘On the other hand, the authorities at the government owned Steel Mills does not have cash to pay this gargantuan bill, as total revenue earned this month barely crossed Rs210 million. Therefore the question of paying the bill does not arise till the government intervenes to settle this issue,’ sources said, adding that the loss making PSE does not even have money to pay staff salaries, they added. SSGC stance to pick on the mills that is already in turmoil does not seem to have sound justification because SSGC is not disconnecting the gas of other organisations that have to pay a greater amount than PSM in terms of gas bills, sources said. ‘KESC is defaulting Rs30 billion to SSGC, but they are not interrupting gas supplies to KESC,’ sources explained.
Suspension of gas to defaulters
When the Deputy Managing Director (operations) SSGC Syed Hassan Nawab was contacted he said the company has issued notices to all defaulting institutions which collectively owe around Rs45 billion to SSGC as the gas company was unable to keep the uninterrupted supply of gas under the acute financial crisis. ‘As the company is facilitating supplies through borrowing credit from banks it will no longer be able to ensure uninterrupted supply to various government and private institutions including Pakistan Steel Mills, Karachi Electric Supply Company which default around Rs5 billion and Rs30 billion to SSGC respectively,’ he added. He said the company has not started loadshedding for PSM and supplying gas to the PSE round the clock without any interruption.
