Investigations into misuse of public utilities on account of various charges has been disclosed in the gas giant Sui Southern Gas Company Limited (SSGCL) as the company has collected billions of rupees from its consumers on account of meter rent in a year without backing of any regulations or procedures.
SSGCL like the Karachi Electric Supply Compnay (KESC) is also charging meter rent from its consumers amounting to millions of rupees. The SSGCL used to charge a fee for the meters and other equipment from customers, always at the time of installation but it has recently been learnt that the firm is quite cleverly extorting its customers by way of ‘meter rent’. The ‘swindling’ firm has allegedly divided its consumers into three zones – domestic consumers are placed in the first zone, commercial consumers in the second while the industrial consumers make up the third zone. The SSGCL has 2.4 million domestic consumers divided into 25,000 commercial and 4,042 industrial users. The meter charges for consumers of all three zones however vary. SSGCL levies a charge of Rs 20 on every domestic consumer in monthly bills under the head of meter rent. For commercial users, the public utility has fixed Rs 100 as meter rent while the rent conveniently varies for the industrial users. “We do not collect the cost of meter at the time of connection,” was the answer of SSGCL General Manager Billing, Shahriyar. “We only charge cost of installation from consumers before connection,” GM Billing further said, adding that “We divide the cost of meter and adjust it in monthly bills”. When asked about the cost of the meter, he was unable to come up with any satisfactory response. He also remained answerless when the shelf life of the meter was inquired about. “It is not meter rent which we charge from the consumers but it is actually line rent which the SSGCL is charging in monthly bills,” SSGCL spokesman Inayatullah Ismail explained later. “We charge this amount from consumers to provide them free of cost services in case of any fault,” the spokesman added.