Daily Times

Energy Minister Hamad Azhar’s statement, that “legitimate” demands of petroleum dealers would be accepted but those seeking a nine-rupee rise in the price of petrol would be “disappointed”, even as he urged them to end their country-wide strike, opened the door to at least two very important questions that his ministry will still have to answer. One, if by “legitimate” demands he meant the demands that were already agreed to by the ministry but not honoured, which forced the strike, then were those demands accepted after all or not.

And two, why did the ministry wake up to this fact after the public had been inconvenienced and pumps shut down even though it knew very well that its own date for meeting the petroleum lobby’s demands, November 15, had come and gone and no promises were honoured? So, did the talks that finally settled the matter start from the beginning all over again or from where they left off? If the latter, then were the same terms accepted or not? And if the answer is yes, then what was the need for all this commotion? And if no, then why was there an agreement, complete with the announcement of a date when everything would be settled, in the first place.

This was clearly one of those issues that wasn’t properly handled by the government. Everybody knows of the pressure from high commodity prices in the international market, especially oil, but that should only have made the government more circumspect when it sat down with the Pakistan Petroleum Dealers Association (PPDA) just a few weeks ago. To start a needless blame game when one’s own word has not been kept and the damage is done serves nobody’s purpose, especially not the public’s that has to pay, quite literally, for the government’s mistakes.

This episode calls for a thorough investigation. If PPDA tried to arm-twist the government to make windfall gains, then it should be made to pay for it. But if the energy ministry was asleep at the wheel once again, then it too should be taken to task. The people of the country have already suffered enough because of the negligence and bungling of others. *