Fuel crisis: Limited response to ‘indefinite’ strike

Many stations continue CNG supply to consumers in Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Lahore.

ISLAMABAD:

The call for all CNG stations in Punjab and the federal capital to go on strike for an indefinite period met with only a partial response on Wednesday.

The All Pakistan CNG Association (APCNGA), which called the strike, claimed that its move was successful in the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi, but the situation on the ground seemed to point only to partial observance.

Even in Lahore, many petrol pumps, and some CNG stations, continued to provide CNG to their consumers.

APCNGA announced a strike for an indefinite period after their failure to persuade the petroleum secretary and managing director (MD) Sui Northern Gas Pipeline Limited (SNGPL) to exempt the CNG sector from gas outages.

Chairman APCNGA Ghias Paracha, while talking to The Express Tribune, claimed that almost all stations remained closed throughout the twin cities. However, petrol pump owners refused to observe a strike and hence, filing stations remained open. The All Pakistan Petroleum Dealers Association (APPDA) has announced that it has got nothing to do with the strike as announced by the Petroleum Retailers Association. But Paracha insisted that the strike was successful and that a few CNG stations that belonged to government ministers did not follow the instructions.

A senior official of the petroleum ministry said that industries were facing shortage of gas supply for half the week, while the SNGPL has been supplying gas to CNG stations five days a week.

He accused the CNG association of trying to exploit the situation in the country. Transporters, especially cab-drivers are taking full advantage of the situation, charging extraordinarily high fares at their own will due to the partial strike. The SNGPL officials said that the gas supply would be restored after the situation improves.

Commuters as well as motorists faced immense difficulties as most transporters and owners of private vehicles could not ply on roads due to the closure of CNG stations.

“The CNG association should also consider the woes of poor commuters and its consumers,” Ayaz Ahmad, a motorist told The Express Tribune.

In Rawalpindi, people faced severe difficulties in getting fuel due to the unavailability at main pumps on the Benazir Bhutto Road. Some fuel stations were selling CNG in the morning but stopped serving customers in the afternoon, leaving them in a lurch.

Hussain Majid, a motorcyclist at the Shamsabad Petrol station told The Express Tribune that he had been waiting for half an hour to get fuel.

Mehwish, another commuter standing at a CNG station near the Pearl Continental, Saddar, said: “This is a battle between the CNG association and the government, but it’s the masses who are suffering.”

In Lahore, the strike called by the APCNGA didn’t hit citizens as hard, as many petrol pumps, along with CNG stations, continued to provide fuel and CNG to their consumers.

Almost 60 per cent of the petrol pumps and 20 per cent of the CNG stations remained open for sales.

Around 3pm, a few CNG stations resumed sales without citing any reasons. Muhammad Adnan, manager at a CNG station, Shadman, said, “I resumed sales after I received a call from the owner to do so. Our pump was closed till 3pm, why the owner decided to re-open it is not in my knowledge.”

The APCNGA chairman said, “We know our act will result in the general public’s suffering, but we are forced to do this as the government was not paying any attention to our demands.” He added: “We are demanding a continuous supply to our stations seven days a week so we can conduct our business in an uninterrupted manner.”

He said that two days of load shedding a week and low pressure for the rest of the week were destroying their business.

With additional reporting by Obaid Abbasi in Rawalpindi and Shahram Haq in Lahore



Published in The Express Tribune, April 14^th, 2011.