CNG, petrol bodies call off strike after govt accepts demands

Associations of petrol pumps and CNG filling stations owners on late Sunday night called off their strike call against an official order of vacating petrol pumps constructed on leased land in the city after the government accepted their demands.The authorities concerned assured the filling stations’ owners that no petrol pump would be sealed and a final decision in this regard would be taken after the return of Punjab chief minister from Abu Dhabi.Earlier, the CNG Pumps Owners’ Association and the Petrol Pump Owners Association in a press conference had threatened that they would close down all the city’s filling stations for 24 hours if the government did not stop vacation of petrol pumps from the leased land.Petrol pumps owners had made the threat after the government ordered a number of petrol stations to vacate the leased land. The government had also directed the authorities concerned to demolish the petrol pumps that were being run on the leased land.The leaders of both the associations, Mehar Arshad, Ghias Paracha, Chaudhry Shahzad and others had said that they would start their protest campaign from Lahore by shutting down petrol pumps for 24 hours. They warned that the government would be responsible for the inconvenience to the public in case they closed their filling stations.They had also said that the two-day closure of CNG filling stations by the government under the gas loadshedding plan during the present winter season was not acceptable to them – Dailytimes