Public woes and role of lawmakers

The Senate Standing Committee on Petroleum has stressed the need for stringent measures to facilitate the common man during its recent meeting held on Tuesday. According to the details, the meeting of the Senate Standing Committee was presided over by Senator Abdul Qadir which discussed the issues relating to an increase in petroleum prices and its grave impact on the poor masses. The meeting was briefed by PLL regarding action taken for long-term allocation of LNG terminals to private firms, while the top brass from the SNGPL told the lawmakers about the present status of the approval of the Initial Access Agreement with the private shippers by its Board of Directors (BoD). The official informed the committee that the reason for the rise in the prices of petroleum products in the country despite a sharp decrease in the prices of commodities in the world was that the government purchased oil in advance from the open market so the masses could not take advantage of lower prices of oil in the past weeks. While the other reason was the application of PDL each month as per the IMF agreement which causes inflation in the prices of petroleum products in the country.

The public representatives always worry about the woes and pain of the masses and intend to play their role to reduce their suffering. The coalition government pulled back all subsidies on energy products including oil, gas, and electricity under the pressure of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which severely hurt the poor masses in the past few months. However, the government gave no heed to public snags because it intended to make deal with the global lender. Interestingly, besides removing subsidies, the incumbent government added to public suffering through a massive Fuel Price Adjustment surcharge in the case of electricity while Petroleum Development Levy (PDL) had been charged for gasoline.

The Senate Standing Committee called on the government officials to get awareness about the reason for the price hike of gasoline but lost word to comment on the government’s foul play. In fact, the nation is used to such economic woes, however, the policymakers should use their wisdom and expertise to lessen public snags instead of prolonging their hard time.