OGRA pre-qualifies 15 cylinder-making units for licences
ISLAMABAD: In a move to encourage local manufacturing of quality cylinders for liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (OGRA) has pre-qualified 15 LPG cylinder-manufacturing units to issue licenses.
According to sources, OGRA will issue licenses to cylinder-manufacturers out of these pre-qualified firms that comply with NFPA-58 standards.
Sources told Daily Times that only five to six LPG cylinders manufacturing units out of these pre-qualified firms meet the international standards and about six units would be issued licenses to provide legal cover to continue their operations of making LPG cylinders in the country.
An OGRA official said that a team headed by Javed Nazir has also visited these firms on locations and the process of issuing licenses is under way. Around 400 factories are said to be involved in manufacturing of substandard and poor quality cylinders illegally and out of these 300 factories are located in Gujranwala.
Recently, OGRA started taking action against units involved in manufacturing of substandard LPG cylinders throughout the country on the protest of LPG Distributors Association of Pakistan.
An OGRA investigative team led by Javed Nazir is working on this issue. Presently, only five LPG cylinder-manufacturing firms in Pakistan are said to manufacture cylinders according to international standards.
Sources said that most of these factories were manufacturing substandard cylinders without obtaining any license from OGRA and are a constant threat to users and have taken hundreds of precious human lives in explosive incidents.
Poor quality cylinders are a major hazard to human life as their manufacturers use second-rate steel sheets, which cannot bear much pressure. These manufacturers are also said to produce about 100,000 poor quality cylinders in a month with low production cost to the detriment of genuine manufacturers.
An OGRA official also informed this scribe that the concerned people of all manufacturing units of LPG cylinders have been asked to approach OGRA for pre-qualification of these manufacturing units so that the process of issuing licenses could move ahead. staff report