KOHAT: The Petroleum Association of Kohat ended its partial strike against raids on filling stations and imposition of heavy fines after the deputy commissioner agreed to listen to its reservations on Thursday.

Assistant commissioner, Kohat, Mohammad Umair had started raids on the petrol and CNG stations on Tuesday last, which were allegedly overcharging the consumers in violation of the prices fixed by the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority. The station owners were allegedly found charging one rupee per litre extra for the last many months.

When contacted, Mr Umair said that a few years ago the association had moved the Peshawar High Court demanding increase in the prices for Kohat, which disposed of the case asking the association to contact the OGRA.

About the raids, he said that under the Constitution the district administration was authorised to check hoarding and price-hike. He said that the administration had strict instructions from both the provincial and federal governments to check hoarding and artificial price-hike against which they had to take action.

When asked for his comments, Chaudhry Shehzad, a representative of the Petroleum Association, said that they were justified to claim one rupee extra per liter from the consumers because the local PSO Depot from where they would get oil had been closed since 2008.

He said that they had to bring oil from Peshawar which put extra burden of carriage charges on them. According to an agreement with the PSO, the carriage charges have to be borne by the filling stations, he said.

Mr Shehzad said that the Babri Banda storage was closed due to security reasons.

He said that it should be made operational now as the security situation had improved otherwise they should be allowed to get compensated. He said that they would take up the issue with the deputy commissioner during a meeting.

The assistant commissioner had fined several filling stations Rs150,000 each during the raids.

Published in Dawn, November 4th, 2016