Owners and workers of refuelling stations and fuel tank lorries are set to enforce a nine-hour strike from 6:00am today to press home their 12-point demands including raising sales commission and checking incessant hike in road rentals.
The strike would be observed from 6:00am to 3:00pm when the refuelling stations will remain closed and tank lorries will not transport petroleum products, says a press release of Bangladesh Petrol Pump O Tank Lorry Malik Shramik Oikya Parishad.
“We believe the government will soon hold talks with us and meet our demands. Otherwise, we will announce an indefinite strike later,” adds the statement.
In the last couple of years, the association repeatedly appealed to the government bodies concerned for holding talks over their problems, but the authorities paid no heed, said Mohammad Nazmul Hoque, convener of the Parishad.
As per rules, all the petrol pumps have to pay a particular amount of rental fees to the Roads and Highways Department (RHD) for using space that connects the pump and the road.
The rent fees are set on the basis of the volume of space. The government has recently issued a gazette notification that raised the rental fees “abnormally”, the association said.
Citing an example, Nazrul said a petrol pump previously used to pay Tk 24,000 annual fees, but the new gazette asks the same pump to pay Tk 2.7 lakh annually.
“We demand cancellation of the gazette,” he told The Daily Star last night.
Currently, pump owners receive Tk 1.7 in sales commission for a litre of diesel, Tk 3.2 for petrol and Tk 3.6 for petrol or octane.
“We demand an increase in sales commission in accordance with a rational proportion,” he said.
One of their prominent demands is to assign a separate category for fuel tank lorries, which are now categorised under trucks and covered-vans, he added.
There are around 5,500 refuelling stations and more than five lakh petroleum distributors and agents in the country, according to the association.