6:05pm Friday 27th January 2012
By Bethan Phillips
RELIGIOUS leaders last night launched a frantic scramble to raise £10,000 to settle a massive backdated gas bill and save a Southampton mosque from closure.
The Abu Bakr Mosque, in Argyle Road, was landed with a bill of nearly £19,000 after British Gas discovered that it had been mistakenly undercharging it for years.
The energy giant has now offered to settle for £10,000 after the Daily Echo intervened, but mosque leaders have warned that they still face closure if they cannot raise the money.
If it shuts, it would mean the 1,400 Muslims who pray at the mosque every Friday would be left without a place to worship.
Committee secretary Mohammad Khan said that he had previously gathered pledges from city businesses to offer British Gas £10,000 but the firm refused to accept it as full payment.
He said: “Before they wouldn’t even listen. Thanks to the Daily Echo now they say they would accept £10,000.
“I’m going to have to go around asking for the money again. Whether they will still give it, I just don’t know.
“We are really struggling – how are we going to pay that sort of money?”
Mosque chairman Sharif Ahmed said: “We’re under enormous economic restraints. In Islamic law we can’t borrow from the bank – we work purely on donations.”
British Gas said that it had been undercharging the mosque by using the wrong calculation to work out how much gas was being used.
The mosque has an old-style meter that uses imperial measurements – but since 2007, the gas company has been charging it as if it had a newer metric meter, meaning it was paying about a third of what it should have.
British Gas corrected the error and demanded back an underpayment of £18,830 together with a £4,000 updated quarterly bill.
The company initially offered to write off £3,737.66 as a “gesture of goodwill” and offered a two-year interest- free payment plan before finally agreeing to accept the £10,000 offered by Mr Khan in “final settlement for the back billing”.
British Gas spokeswoman Sian Callaghan said: “We have been talking to Mr Khan, and have apologised for not resolving this problem sooner, but hope we have now come to a mutually acceptable solution.
“In addition we have offered to put the mosque’s bills on to a special tariff which should help reduce their costs going forward.”
Mr Khan says the mosque has been at the centre of Southampton’s Muslim community for more than seven years and he is distraught at the prospect of it closing.
He said: “This is not our fault. I don’t know where I’ll go if it closes.”
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