The government on Thursday introduced an application to check hoarding amid import disruptions of petroleum products from the war-hit Gulf region that forced consumers to struggle to collect fuel oils over the past one month.
On Thursday, there was no different picture in the city’s filling stations with consumers queuing for hours to collect octane and petrol.
Energy Division officials at a briefing at the secretariat in the capital Dhaka on the day said that the quick response code-based application called ‘Fuel Pass’ app had been launched on a pilot basis at Trust Filling Station at Tejgaon and Sonar Bangla Filling Station at Asadgate for providing octane and petrol to motorcyclists.
If the pilot initiative proves successful, the ‘Fuel Pass’ app will gradually be expanded nationwide for all types of vehicles under a central dashboard of state-owned Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation through integration of the central database of the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority.
The briefing came one day after a ceasefire agreed by Iran and the United States for two weeks.
At the briefing, Monir Hossain Chowdhury, a joint secretary of the Energy Division, said the monthly subsidy for energy items was Tk 3,000 crore to Tk 3,500 crore because of price hikes of the energy items on the global market.
Bangladesh imports about 90 per cent of its annual energy consumption.
Under the fuel pass, filling station owners will be able to digitally enter fuel allocations and distribute them to registered consumers with the fuelpass.gov.bd, according to a press release issued by the Energy Division.
Users will be able to receive fuel by scanning QR codes and also check their allocated quota.
Admitting long queues are frequent at most filling stations, the press release said that artificial shortages were also created by many individuals by collecting more fuel than necessary by standing in queues multiple times.
About 4,69,042 litres of illegally stored fuel oil were recovered in the ongoing nationwide drives by mobile courts from March 3 to April 7.
The largest quantity was diesel, amounting to 3,52,047 litres, was recovered followed by 80,374 litres of petrol and 36,621 litres of octane.
The number of cases filed during the operations is 3,111.
Monir Hossain said that investigations were on to know the political identity, if there any, of the hoarders.
New Age Manikganj correspondent reported that the National Security Intelligence seized 4,000 litres of petrol when they were transported at a shop from a filling station at Shibalaya in Manikganj.
The filling station, M/S Rumi Filling Station, is owned by Awami League leader Abdur Rahim Khan, according to local people.
Station manager Babul Hossen and a dealer Mamun Pradhan were taken into custody by the police.
Two ships carrying 51,000 tonnes of fuel arrived from Malayasia at outer anchorage of the Chattogram port in the Bay of Bengal on Thursday, according to the Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha.
Chittagong Port Authority secretary Syed Refayet Hamim said one ship brought 25,000 tonnes of furnace oil while another one 26,000 tonnes of octane.
The commerce ministry has started a nationwide crackdown on the overpricing of liquefied petroleum gas.
On Thursday, it asked all deputy commissioners to launch drives and initiate legal measures against those flouting government-set rates updated in the past week.
On April 2, the price of widely used 12-kilogram cylinder of LPG jumped to Tk 1,728 from Tk 1,341, marking a hike of Tk 387 a cylinder.
However, consumers have to pay more than rates set by the Bangladesh Energy Regulatory Commission to buy the essential cooking gas from the retailers.
