Fueling anger in New Year celebrations

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As the world welcomed the New Year with bright fireworks and parties, residents of the twin cities celebrated by hunting petrol for their vehicles, waiting in long queues for their turn to get fuel and abusing the government, Ministry of Petroleum and other stakeholders for paying no heed to their difficulties.
The Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) shortage has multiplied the load of consumers at petrol stations. They have to wait in long queues outside petrol pumps for hours and cause interruption in the flow of traffic.
The fuel shortage has also forced petrol pump staff members to provide no more than three litres fuel to consumers who have to wait for hours in freezing weather.
In Rawalpindi, petrol stations have run out of fuel on Murree Road, irking public transporters as well as private vehicle owners. The load of consumers in Rawalpindi has subsequently shifted to the federal capital. However, there are very few petrol pumps in the capital and they only provide three litres of fuel to consumers at a time.
It approximately takes three and a half hours for a single vehicle in queue to get its petrol tank filled for three measly litres.
On the other hand, few petrol pump owners have even shut their pumps down using excuses like ‘out of light’, ‘out or order’ or ‘no petrol available.’
Due to the shortage of petrol, public transporters and private cab owners have multiplied their transport fares which has added to the miseries of the general public.
Several consumers complained about the situation and blamed the government, CNG associations, the Supreme Court, Ministry of Petroleum for the fiasco. Some consumers asked why the Chief Justice of Pakistan hadn’t taken any action to address the petroleum crisis.
Petrol pump staff members said they had an insufficient supply of fuel which is why they had fixed the quantity of petrol supplied to consumers to benefit as many as possible. However they mentioned that if the crises persisted they would be out of petrol in the next few days forcing them to shut down their pumps.
The Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (OGRA) is also going to announce new CNG prices, and if consensus with CNG station owners is reached, the situation will reach some semblance of normalcy.