LAHORE, July 8: The Pakistan Motor Transport Federation has urged the government to link road transport fares on inter-city routes with diesel prices for saving transporters from losses or deregulate fares.

Federation Vice President Haji Naseer Ahmed Butt demanded the government increase bus fares on inter-city routes.

In a statement, he said recently the Punjab government had increased fares by paisa 10 per kilometer against their demand of paisa 18 per kilometer.

He said a further increase of paisa 2 per kilometer was necessary because of an increase of over Rs5 per litre in diesel price after fare increase.

He said every bus consumed 200 litres of diesel daily.

The operation cost went up by an average Rs1,000 per day due to an increase in diesel prices.

He said the government should either link fares with diesel prices or deregulate the fares of air-conditioned buses on the pattern of non-air-conditioned so that the transport owners could revise the fares in accordance with the increase in diesel prices.

He said the government had focused its attention mainly on urban transport comprising only 1,200 vehicles but inter-city transport, consisting of over 50,000 vehicles, was ignored despite much larger contribution to revenue.

Cash award: The Punjab Ministerial Development Corporation on Tuesday decided to award half pay as cash award to the junior staff and officers in view of excellent financial performance and regularised 221 daily-wagers -- 150 in Scale 1 to 4 -- serving it for the past 10 to 15 years.

The decision was taken during a meeting of the Punjmin Board of Directors held here with senior provincial minister Raja Riaz Ahmed in chair. The Punjmin will have to spend Rs900,000 on payment of cash awards.

The BoD also decided to adopt the promotion rules of Service and General Administration Department and constituted a sub-committee headed by Punjmin secretary to examine the charter of demands of the CBA union and submit its recommendations during the next meeting.

The BoD also decided to adopt the S&GAD rules for rotational transfers of general managers after every three years.

It agreed to adopt Cumulative Pricing System to encourage further investment and exploration in the mining sector and facilitate creation of new job opportunities.