MULTAN,June 7th:Unavailability of petrol at majority of filling stations besides the scheduled load management for CNG stations hit the thousands of vehicle users and daily commuters hard another day on Monday.
The fuel shortages not only created problems for the motorists, students and office goers but also caused massive nuisance for the Multanites with paralysing the routine business activities in the ancient city of Asia . The fare charging remained high at city routes as compared to the regular days and the already least available urban transport was totally off at some city routes.Some sources disclosed that ‘low margin’ on petroleum products for the dealers was the main reason behind the ‘fake shortages’ of fuel while the Petroleum Dealers Association claimed that they were getting low quantity of petrol from the supplier companies since last many days.Scores of commuters were witnessed waiting for transport at bus-stops and long queues were also observed at majority of filling stations, where the people have to go without getting petrol despite waiting for hours in the sizzling heat.
“I am standing here for the last 35 minutes and waiting my turn to get one litre of petrol to reach my office,” a motorcyclist Abdul Muneeb standing at a petrol pump at Kalima Chowk commented on the situation exhaustedly while talking to this scribe. About 40 people were witnessed standing at the petrol pump waiting their turn. People have to rush from one petrol pump to another to fill their vehicles.
Daily commuters have to change two to three vans to reach their destinations, which on regular days they travelled by using only one.
“I have to change two vans to reach my shop at Gulgasht from Hassan Parwana, the first van dropped me at Chgungi No.9 wherefrom I picked the second,” said Hafeez-ullah, a worker at a bookshop. He complained that the van-owners were overcharging stop-to-stop fare by Rs 2 to Rs 5 and no one was there to stop them, he added.On the other hand, the illegal petrol sellers spend a busy day and they kept fleecing people by selling petrol at high prices. The consumers have to purchase petrol by paying Rs 100 to Rs 110 per litre, whereas, the official price of petrol is Rs 86.7 per litre.
The Petroleum Dealers Association Punjab spokesman Muhammad Iqbal was of the view that there was less supply of fuel from the refineries adding the oil marketing companies were also not picking up stocks from the refineries because of shortages of money for buying fuel from the refineries. He said the demand and supply gap was the main reason behind the shortages since last week. According to him, the filling stations of not only Multan but all the cities of Southern Punjab from Sarghoda to Sadiqabad were facing severe shortages of petrol. However, the Association office-bearer was hopeful that the problem would solve in coming days. Meanwhile, the the two-day weekly holidays at CNG stations added the problems of the people. The commuters said that they faced huge problems because of the closure of CNG pumps. At least, they added, the government had to arrange specific CNG gas stations for urban transport. Criticising, the transport authorities, the government, the commuters were of the view that the incumbent government failed to provide any facility to people and even the public transport facilities were not available to them since two years.
