PESHAWAR: People here in the provincial metropolis and some parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Saturday faced problems due to unavailability of petrol at filling stations except those of PSO pumps where long queues of motorcycles and cars were witnessed.

During visits to the filling stations of different companies in Peshawar this reporter witnessed that most of them had displayed signboards inscribed with apologetic words about unavailability of petrol while some of them had covered the pumps with sheets so as to avoid trouble.

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“Petrol is not being supplied on its scheduled time and it has been causing the problem. We are not sure about the exact time of supply,” an operator at the FC Petrol Pump told Dawn. He said that that fuel stations had dried up in the morning.

Similarly, the operators at Shell Petrol Pump near Qayyum Stadium had also displayed a signpost about unavailability of petrol.

The only filling stations where petrol was available were that of PSO. A large number of cars and motorcycles were seen lined in long queues to get the commodity, where some of the people were busy exchanging hot words over the issue of breaking the queue.

“The rest of fuel stations have stopped the sale of petrol and all the motorists have turned towards the PSO filling stations,” an operator, Samiullah, said and added that he did not know if the supply would be resumed anytime soon.

The shortage of petrol has, however, not affected passenger vehicles in the province as most of them were fitted with CNG kits. “We have not faced any problem so far,” said Urban Transport president Khan Zaman Afridi. When contacted, a leader of Petroleum Dealers Association, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Mansoor Sharif, said that on the one hand the government had failed to clear about Rs118 billion arrears of the PSO badly affecting its operations, on the other political crisis had affected the supply of petroleum products.

He said that supplies of rest of the oil companies also depended on PSO, but owing to lack of attention on part of the federal government the PSO was unable to maintain the supply.

He claimed that the stuck up arrears of Rs118 billion was the main reason for supply problems. He said that the Pakistan Railways, power plants and other departments should pay the dues so that the supply of petroleum products could be resumed. He said that the law and order situation in Punjab had also caused delay in supply of petroleum products.

Mr Sharif said that about 550 filling stations in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were facing petrol shortage while most of them had stopped the sale. He demanded of the government to increase the dealers’ commission from Rs2 per litre to Rs5 as in the prevailing situation the dealers could not meet even their expenditures.

Published in Dawn, August 10th, 2014