LAHORE – All ghee and cooking oil mills throughout the country remained closed on Saturday to protest against Karachi’s transport mafia after Friday’s incident in which four tankers, carrying consignments of edible oil, were torched.
The transport mafia, backed by political parties including PPP, MQM and ANP, forced the manufacturers to use its services for transportation purposes despite high rates. The powerful mafia is also involved in stealing the consignments (oil drums) from its supply trucks.
Market sources said that shopkeepers usually maintain one-week stocks of ghee and cooking oil. So, closure of ghee and cooking oil units will not make any instant impact on supply.
However, they said the prices are expected to rise if closure of mills is extended to more than three days. Pakistan Vanaspati Manufacturers Association (PVMA) has decided that the gates of all the ghee and cooking oil mills would remain closed from Saturday to show solidarity with the NLC, the services of which the PVMA uses for the transportation of consignments. The PVMA said that the mills would be kept closed until the government gives an assurance of providing security for the safe transportation of edible oil consignments from Karachi to other destinations.
According to the PVMA, to ensure smooth supply of oil to ghee mills all over Pakistan, National Logistic Cell (NLC) was hired by PVMA. The said NLC services have been endorsed by Sindh High Court (SHC), Karachi vide its judgment on Feb 15, 2012. On February 17, 2012, tankers mafia flouted the orders of SHC and burnt four vehicles of NLC loaded with edible oil.
“We have close down 96 ghee and cooking oil units all over the country from Saturday,” said Tanvir Soofi, a leading name in oil manufacturing industry.
The incident and non-compliance of SHC directions have created a wave of fear and uncertainty among manufacturers of vegetable ghee and cooking oil. Soofi said that it was interested in lifting the oil from terminals at ports in NLC tankers as it is cheaper and safe and no theft is made on the way to the industries. He stated that the oil belonged to them and they had the right to transport oil through any source.
PVMA said that private transporters torched four oil tankers near Port Qasim Area. One tanker each belonged to Sufi Industries and Mehboob Industries respectively, while two tankers were taking palm oil for Hafeez Iqbal Industries. These tankers were carrying over 200 tons of oil worth of Rs30 million.
The daily supply of raw material from port to all over the country is 6,000 tons and roughly the same quantity of ghee and cooking oil is produced on daily basis, he said.
The tussle between private oil tankers association and PVMA is not new. Tankers owners had gone on strike twice in January 2011, halting the supply of raw material from port to the ghee/cooking oil units.
The incident has also shown helplessness of the ghee and cooking oil mills at the hands of transport mafia, which has deliberately burnt the oil tankers causing loss to the industry.