Despite claims by Nepali government officials to normalize supply of petroleum products after raising the fuel price Thursday, very few pump owners in capital Kathmandu dared open their pumps fearing vandalism and protest.
Except for some government owned petrol pumps, most of the private pumps in Kathmandu remained closed on Thursday fearing the large scale vandalism and arson which took place due to similar decision in Aug. 2006.
Talking to Xinhua, owner of Ganesh Petrol Pump Santosh Sharma said that "We never received any compensation for buying fuel in higher price last time after the government was forced to roll back its decision within 48 hours," he said.
Long queues of vehicles lined up at the petrol pumps owned by the Nepal Police and Nepal Army as rest of the privately owned petrol pumps preferred to close their pumps fearing vandalism due to lack of necessary security arrangements.
The Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC), the government owned sole distributor of petroleum products in the country, Wednesday announced the price hike in petrol, diesel, kerosene and cooking gas effective from Thursday citing continuous loss it has been incurring due to disparity with international price.
According to Digambar Jha, the managing director of the NOC, the new retail price of petrol has been fixed at 73 Nepali rupees (about 1.12 U.S. dollars), diesel at 55.86 rupees (about 0.87 dollars) and kerosene at 51 rupees (about 0.78 dollars) per liter while the price of liquid petroleum gas (LPG) has been fixed at 1, 100 rupees (about 16.9 dollars) per cylinder.
With the hike in price of petroleum products, Nepali customers will bear the higher cost ranging between 6 to 22 percent than the previous price. The price of aviation fuel has been left unchanged.
Following the government decision to increase the price of petroleum products, students, transport workers and various other organizations took to the street to protest in various thoroughfares of the capital city on Thursday.
Stating that the price hike decision has hit hard the general public, All Nepal National Students' Union- Revolutionary (ANNISU- R), the student wing of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) (CPN- M) organized a demonstration program on Thursday urging the government to find an alternative solution to increase in price of petroleum products.
The agitating groups also accused the government of failing to curb corruption within the NOC which has caused unnecessary expenses making the price of fuel expensive.
Justifying the price hike, the NOC official said that the change in the price was inevitable due to the fact that the price of oil in international market has gone up more than 20 dollars per barrel during last 4-5 years. He added that the NOC has been incurring about 6 million U.S. dollars every month due to disparity in import-sales price leading to nearly 80 million dollars dues its sole supplier Indian Oil Corporation (IOC).
With ever increasing dues, the IOC had cut down the supply of petroleum products to Nepal which caused severe fuel shortage in the country over past six months.
Source: Xinhua
|
Comment
Tell A Friend
Print Format
Save Article