Plea for parliamentary body to fix oil prices

The transporters community on Friday demanded that a bipartisan parliamentary committee, comprising members of both ruling and opposition benches, should be set up to fix oil prices in the country.
A meeting of the transport organisation leaders was held in the central office of the National Transport Ittehad with its chairman Saleem Khan Bangash in the chair.
A large number of transport leaders, representing various organisations of owners and operators of buses, minibuses, coaches, rickshaws, taxis, yellow cabs, gravel-loading trucks, trailer-trucks and inter-provincial public transport, attended the meeting.
The meeting expressed deep concern over the apathy of the government regarding solving problems related to the transporter community. They strongly criticised the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (Ogra) for not announcing decrease in the fuel prices in Pakistan after their downslide in the global market.
It said that this behaviour of the policymakers was raising chaos in the transporter community. They rejected the Federal budget as anti-poor, saying it failed to lessen prices of wheat flour, sugar, milk and other daily-use commodities.
They demanded that instead of issuing hollow statements regarding controlling the price hike, the government should take serious and concrete steps to bring down prices of oil and daily-use commodities.
They said that they were not satisfied with the role of the Ogra for setting up fuel prices. They further demanded that in view of falling petrol and diesel prices in the international market, corresponding relief should immediately be transferred to the Pakistani consumers.
The transporters said that last time public transport fares were raised on May 10, 2005. They demanded that either the rate of diesel be lowered to the level of May 10, 2005, or the fares of public transport be raised.
They asked the government that instead of banning two-stroke rickshaws and other public transport vehicles prior to 1976 model, it should hold talks with the transporters to find a solution to air pollution issue, or it should purchase old vehicles and rickshaws from them and provide them CNG-run vehicles. They also demanded that action against slum areas should be stopped henceforth.