Editorial
CNG filling moratorium
Rethink the long hours
Impulsive response to a deep-seated crisis, be it handling traffic congestion or suspending CNG gas filling for a big block of time appears to have been something of a signature emblem of governance. The ostensible purpose behind pre-mature closing down of educational institutions for the Ramadan and Eid and now behind the six-hourly daily prohibition of CNG supply at the filling stations has a ring of 'yureka' chant about it. As though an answer to nagging civic problems has been ingeniously hit up on. Panacea to long-standing diseases has been found at long last -- such is the self-congratulatory mode! But how are the organisations and users taking it?
What cost the surprise solution is bound to extract from education and public mobility, the fact that it would generate more problems than solve was hardly ever carefully weighed before jumping to conclusion. It looked expedient and convenient, so why not?
But look at the consequences of the six hour moratorium on CNG filling stations. Just into its second day, the cessation of gas supply between 3pm and 9pm has come to a crunch bearing down heavily on civic life. The stated purpose this time around is to scrounge gas for power plants and to increase gas pressure for domestic use at peak hours. How much it is served with all the systemic flaws there are, only time will tell. Nevertheless, the negative fall out in terms of long queues impinging on road space around a large number of filling stations is manifest through traffic jam, sudden stranding of transports, a large number of which are only CNG fuelled, to say nothing of waste of man hours and hikes in fare. Who is going to calculate the losses and recompense for it?
Other seminal questions arise: why CNG conversions were not tied in with gas generation figures, why these were not linked to other uses of gas in an overall planning framework. We allow things to happen unbridled and then pass the burden of failure, both of planning and management, on to the people?
Our final point is, for whatever reasons if you have to suspend gas supply then reduce the number of hours, which are excruciatingly long.
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