LAHORE - Around 50 per cent Lahorites are either receiving low gas pressure or even unable to light their stoves at homes despite gas supply to industry and CNG stations in Punjab is suspended for a more than a week. The Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL) is facing more than 1,200 million cubic feet per day shortage with demand crossing four billion cubic feet while supply side is hovering near 1,800 mmcfd. The company officials say they are unable to maintain parallel supply to all sectors.

But the people complain that when two sectors (industrial and CNG) are not getting gas then where it goes. They say employees are involved in gas theft besides the company management failed to curb the menace.
Consumers say some officials supply gas to certain industrialists and created so-called crisis. On the other hand, the industrialists and CNG stations owners are also blaming each other for the shortage. Meanwhile, majority of the City areas including, Allama Iqbal Town, Green Town, Township, Slamat Pura, GT Road, Baghbanpura, Shahdara, Burki Road, Shadi Pura, Islampura and other Northern parts of the City received very low gas pressure and people could not even prepare their food. 
A similar situation was being observed in connection with electricity when the Lahorites had to face eight to ten hours loadshedding with two to three hours consecutive cuts of the power failure.
The national grid is facing around 4,000MW shortfall which means around eight hours load shedding in daily basis but, according to some sources, the federal government is shifting major electricity portion to Sindh and Khyber PK and thus Punjab’s rural and urban areas are under the grip of more than 10 hours outages.  “The feeders in posh areas are conducting minimum loadshedding as compared to the under developed localities,” said an official seeking anonymity.