LAHORE: A private company that was tasked with recovering bad debts of SNGPL is now after SNGPL to get recovered its money from it, Pakistan Today has learnt on Saturday.
Documents available with Pakistan Today revealed that three years ago Sui Northern Gas Pipeline (SNGPL) has commissioned a private firm namely KAP Associates for recovering bad debts worth Rs 234 million from different industrial units and individuals.
The company was given eight cities for recovering the bad debts. These cities include Peshawar, Abbottabad, Rawalpindi, Gujranwala, Lahore, Faisalabad, Multan and Bhawalpure. SNGPL was supposed to pay 2 percent service charges to the company on each recovery. The company after long efforts managed to recover Rs 134 million from the defaulters and the money was deposited with SNGPL.
However, the SNGPL instead paying of the company stopped payments of Rs 6.5 million saying it has not met the agreement of recovering Rs 234 million. According to the contract, the SNGPL on every recovery would retains two percent of recovered amount and was supposed to pay the company later. Now, KAP is asking from SNGPL to pay that two percent amount, as it recovered huge amount for SNGPL but latter is denying.
According to agreement, SNGPL was also bound to disconnect gas supply of the defaulter and new connection could not be installed at the defaulter’s address until all previous payments are not cleared. The SNGPL officials did not care about the clause and kept giving new connections to the defaulters, said KAP Associates
Chief Executive Khalid Iqbal adding it gave an opportunity to the defaulters to get connections with new names. “The defaulters with the help of SNGPL officials get connections on the same defaulted address,” said Khalid Iqbal adding the company has a number of cases, in which the defaulter has to pay Rs 10 million to SNGPL but instead of paying the bill, the defaulter contacted SNGPL official and after paying half amount (Rs 5 million) and got new connection.
“We wrote letters many time to the SNGPL officials for disconnecting the gas supplies to the defaulters but in vain and it gave free hands to the defaulters for greasing the palms of SNGPL,” he said adding his company recovered the bad debts. “SNGPL has totally failed to collect the debts from the defaulters and got our services for collecting bad debts. Our firm managed to recover Rs 134 million but in return we are deprived off from our right. Interestingly, SNGPL is asking me to pay more Rs 1.5 million, as I have not followed the agreement,” he lamented.
“We approached Ministry of Petroleum (MoP), whose advisor asked SNGPL for clearing the dues,” he added. He said this discouraging attitude of SNGPL is mysterious. “It indicates that SNGPL is favouring the defaulters,” he added. When contacted the SNGPL Managing Director Rasheed Lone for comments, he did not attend cell phone. The SNGPL spokesman Awais Bajwa denied to comment on the issue.
