Flood-triggered fuel shortage cripples life in Pakistan

Pakistani citizens, businessmen and industrialists are facing massive problems due to the unavailability of petrol and diesel at most filling stations of the country following a limited supply of petroleum products after floods washed away the link roads.

Long queues of motorcycles, cars and other vehicles are seen outside petrol pumps in most of the cities of the provinces Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

Filling station workers are busy in informing arriving commuters about the non-availability of the petroleum products. While some other filling stations have displayed notice boards reading "Petrol Not Available."

Customers having CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) kits in their vehicles are the exception because the gas supply through pipelines is normally smooth.

However, according to the weekly scheduled gas load shedding, they too will be left without fuel for their vehicles.

Many government officials and common citizens had reportedly to park their vehicles by roads and in their offices after ending the fuel.

Pakistan always imports major part of its fuel needs from other countries which first arrives at the port of Pakistan's southern coastal city Karachi in Sindh province and then is supplied to the other part of the country through road transportation. Recent flash floods devastated almost all roads linking other three provinces to the Sindh which has halted the fuel supply.

According to government officials, the fuel storage in provinces' own oil godowns is going to finish with in few days. But the fuel supply situation in the country's capital Islamabad is still smooth.

Usman Khan, a car owner in Lahore, told Xinhua that he could not get petrol from five nearby filling stations and was thinking to park his car on roadside.

"It's my second day I went to the fuel station but returned without any success even after waiting for two hours. The government should do some thing to resume the supply of petrol in to city, otherwise businesses will stop," Anjum Pitafi, a local journalist from southern Punjab's city Multan told Xinhua on phone.

Businessmen and industrialists also demanded the government to control the situation to resume the supply of petroleum products.

Taking the benefits form the situation, some profiteers also increased the rate of the fuel which had forced transporters to increase fares.

All-Pakistan Petrol Pumps Association (APPPA) said that the situation would improve after the resumption of smooth supply of petroleum product from oil refineries.

"Some refineries were not working while some others were not accessible after land routes were cut between Punjab and some other provinces," Shabbir Sarwar, a representative of APPPA in Punjab, told media.

Source: Xinhua