Pakistan govt faces heat from oppn leader as petrol shortage persists

The government said they have created the entire crisis.

The government said they formed a committee to probe “the element of hoarding and black marketing”, media reports said.

A senior official of the Petroleum Division told Dawn News that total petrol stocks in the country had dropped below 200,000 tonnes and that of diesel to about 160,000 tonnes and were enough for six and four days, respectively. 

He said the major challenge was the transportation to overcome shortage and even out supplies.

A couple of oil ships would beef up supplies over the next three to four days, he added.

The Petroleum Division notified an eight member committee to “verify the availability of stocks in the depots of the Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs) and their supply to the retail outlets”, Dawn News reported.

The committee will be led by Director General Oil Dr Shaf-ur-Rehman Afridi and has representatives of the Oil & Gas Regulatory Authority (Ogra), Pakistan State Oil (PSO), district administration, Hydrocarbon Development Institute of Pakistan (HDIP) and a member of the Federal Investigation Agency, reported the Pakistani newspaper.

Reacting to the shortage of petroleum products in the country, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) President and Leader of Opposition in the National Assembly Mian Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif criticised the PM Imran Khan-led government and described the situation as its failure.

The Leader of the Opposition said that the government should sit down with the petroleum companies and come up with an immediate solution as people are suffering due to the shortage in petroleum products, reports The Frontier Post.

The issue was also raised in an editorial piece published in The Express Tribune.

Questioning the government's stand on the issue, the newspaper wrote: "The government could do several things to make life easier for people, but forcing private businesses to run losses to achieve this should not be an option."