ISLAMABAD: Islamabad Chamber of Small Traders on Thursday lauded the government for importing LNG to bridge the gap between demand and supply of gas.
They urged the government for taking steps to contain theft of local gas in order to smooth energy supply for domestic and commercial sectors of the country.
The precious foreign exchange was used to import LNG while the theft of the local gas has almost doubled to the import of gas which was a great loss, they added.
In a statement Patron Islamabad Chamber of Small Traders Shahid Rasheed Butt urged the government for taking steps to reduce gas losses as the same volume of gas can help to generate 5,500 MW of electricity at a rate of Rs 5 per unit.
Apart from theft, some of the losses can be attributed to the unpaid bills and leakage which can be managed, he added.
The gas companies continue to put the entire burden of gas theft on the consumers which amount to punishing the honest consumers and at the same time, it is a great incentive against good practices, he added.
Losses of the gas companies continue to climb since a decade as no serious effort has been made to reduce the losses which are now over 14 percent worth tens of billions of rupees per day, he said.
The business leader said that losses of gas utilities in Australia are under 0.5 percent, it is one percent in the UK, while it around 2.16 to 2.65 percent in Canada, Germany, Ukraine and New Zealand, he observed.
The losses in Turkey are 4.2 percent and the same in Croatia are 3.3 percent while it is in the double digit in the both gas utilities in Pakistan, he remarked.
