Petrol Pump Owners Refuse to Implement Prime Minister’s Relief Scheme
KARACHI (Qudrat Daily) – The Pakistan Petrol Pump Owners Association has flatly refused to implement the government’s announced Prime Minister’s Relief Scheme. According to media reports, Chairman of the All Pakistan Petrol Pump Owners Association, Humayun Khan, said that with the government’s Rs100 subsidy, customers and petrol pump owners will now end up fighting each other. He added that the government makes policies without petrol pump owners even being aware of them, and that they were not informed about the Rs100 subsidy either. He stated that daily changes in prices are causing losses to petrol pump owners and questioned why the government does not provide relief to the public by abolishing the levy.
The association’s General Secretary, Noman Butt, said in this regard that before launching such a large and important relief scheme, no consultation or negotiations of any kind were held with petroleum dealers. Neither the relevant Ministry of Petroleum, nor the Prime Minister’s Office, nor OGRA bothered to take dealers into confidence. He said the government announced the subsidy but did not explain how petrol pump owners would get this money back. The dealers’ community has serious and severe reservations over the payment and recovery mechanism, due to which the project cannot be implemented in its current form.
He strongly criticized the government, saying that by keeping dealers completely in the dark, efforts are being made to forcibly impose this scheme on petrol pumps across the country, which is completely unacceptable. He said that in this entire matter, the biggest problem and obstacle is the unclear method of providing the subsidy amount. Until dealers know how and within how much time the subsidy money will be transferred to their accounts, how can they bear this financial burden from their own pockets?
Petrol pump owners have said that implementing this scheme without any clear framework could prove financially disastrous for dealers. If the government provides dealers with a formal legal guarantee of timely and full payment of subsidy amounts, then consideration could be given to running this relief scheme. However, in the absence of any solid payment guarantee, implementation of the scheme is not possible for dealers. Ensuring the protection and certainty of dealers’ dues and recoveries is the government’s basic responsibility. Therefore, until a transparent payment system is devised, the implementation of the relief scheme should be kept postponed.
