KARACHI, Dec 26: The recent incidents of gas cylinder explosions in commercial transport vehicles have set alarm bells ringing in the provincial administration, which plans to call a meeting of `all stakeholders` this week, but transporters have made it clear that they will not stop using CNG in their buses and will resist any such move, it emerged on Monday.
Officials privy to the development said the meeting was to be called by the Sindh home department after key members of the ministry took suggestions from a group of experts, who warned of a persisting threat to public transport passengers amid unchecked conversion of buses from diesel to CNG.
“We`ll definitely like to hear from the CNG dealers, transporters, the officials concerned and the experts who recently suggested several measures on the issue,” said Sharfuddin Memon, the adviser to the Sindh home ministry. “Though most CNG cylinder explosions have been reported in Punjab, we need to prepare ourselves to prevent such incidents. For that purpose, it`s imperative to design a policy under experts and take the stakeholders on board with regulators to execute the plan.”
The government plan sounded in the right direction though a little late, as experts say they believe it was about time a policy was quickly devised.
They think the existing system to certify public transport fitness is obsolete and needs an immediate review.
“To the best of our understanding, we need to totally revamp the vehicular examination and fitness system,” said Tariq Moen of the Fire Protection Association of Pakistan, a non-profit organisation promoting fire protection awareness. The FPAP has recently come up with a 13-point proposal to handle the situation.
“To ensure safety on roads, we should think of an out-of-the-box solution, which may be privatising the system by involving highly trained and responsible teams to examine and certify the vehicles,” added Mr Moen.
The transporters, on the other hand, are apparently willing to follow a new policy for their vehicles fitness, but are firm on using CNG as fuel and resist any decision that bans the use of the gas in public transport vehicles as is proposed by the federal government.
The Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority has recently recommended a ban on CNG use in public transport, saying the decision was needed in view of accidents involving the CNG system in public transport. The regulator said the main reason for the increasing number of accidents was the use of substandard fittings.
“In Karachi we have 8,000 minibuses, 7,000 coaches and 3,000 buses,” said Irshad Bukhari of the Karachi Transport Ittehad. “Among minibuses, 60 per cent have already converted to the CNG. Similarly, 40pc of coaches and the same number of buses are running on CNG. Transporters have invested millions of rupees in that process and it`s not possible to ban them from using the CNG.”
He said the transporters within the last one year had converted their vehicles to CNG because of rising prices of diesel that even caused losses to many operators.
“We are very much willing to attend the meeting, but only to assist and ensure our cooperation for any new policy that helps in maintaining fitness of vehicles. Quitting the use of the CNG in public transport is not an option,” he said.
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