Safer cylinders

Following the series of accidents involving bursting cylinders in public transport vehicles fuelled by CNG, a task force set up by the ministry of petroleum and natural resources has come up with a plan to ensure greater safety for the cylinders and avoid the kind of accidents we have seen in the past, costing dozens of lives. Under the plan, which is to be submitted to the Supreme Court by the 15^th of this month, CNG kits will need to be tested at especially designated private and public sector centres, where engineers will be employed. At a meeting with various stakeholders, it was also agreed that CNG filling stations would employ better trained staff, aged over 18, who would be better able to detect a flawed kit or one that had been poorly maintained. It should be noted that at present there are shops selling CNG kits in virtually every town in the country, while hundreds operate in cities — but there is no check on the quality of the potentially hazardous product they sell.

As such, the new scheme to set up better safety standards is badly needed; we must hope it will be approved and implemented as soon as possible, with courts also taking notice of the issue. But we have a problem. However, as with so many matters in the past, the main issue will be that of implementation. The measures of a similar nature taken in the past have failed to work because they have not been enforced. As with almost every law in the country, our capacity to do so is notoriously poor. We can only hope things will be different this time round. Perhaps CNG pump owners and kit manufacturers will themselves realise the gravity of the situation, and cooperate with the efforts to make cylinders safer. Only if they do so, can the plan devised work. Most of the laws regulating the sale of corrosive substances have been around for almost two decades, so the issue clearly has to do with lack of enforcement.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 14^th, 2012.