Goods transporters have launched an indefinite nationwide strike against rising fuel costs, daily diesel price adjustments and a range of tax and regulatory measures they say are pushing the sector under (Geo News).
All Pakistan Goods Transport Alliance President Malik Shehzad Awan said freight operators had suspended services across the country and would continue until further notice. The federal government has invited the alliance for talks on Monday, and the alliance has formed a committee to negotiate; the strike will continue until the outcome is reviewed. Earlier talks at the Commissioner’s Office produced no breakthrough.
The demand that distinguishes this dispute is procedural rather than financial. The transporters want the daily revision of diesel prices abandoned in favour of fortnightly or monthly changes, arguing that daily movement makes freight impossible to price with any predictability. A haulier quoting a rate for a multi-day journey has no way of knowing what the fuel will cost by the time the vehicle arrives.
OGRA has published daily prices since the government adopted the mechanism in response to volatility in international markets, with rates set against a seven-day average of international benchmarks.
Their other demands are fiscal. They want taxes on diesel reduced and fuel prices restored to their July 1, 2024 level; the withholding tax on cargo transporters cut from 7 per cent to 2 per cent, the rate they say oil tanker operators already pay; and toll taxes reduced. Awan claimed a single trailer pays as much as Rs2.4 million in tolls. They also object to customs enforcement measures under which vehicles carrying non-duty-paid goods may be confiscated, and want a simplified procedure for obtaining heavy transport vehicle licences.
Awan said the protest was deliberately passive. Transporters were parking their vehicles rather than blocking roads, he said, because road closures inconvenience the public — a pointed contrast with the highway blockades staged by Jamaat-e-Islami two days earlier over the same underlying grievance.
He accused the federal and provincial governments of failing to implement the alliance’s charter of demands and called for the resignation of Petroleum Minister Ali Pervaiz Malik and Punjab Senior Minister Maryam Aurangzeb, alleging that commitments to transporters had not been honoured. He said he would not personally join the talks, and that the strike would be called off once the government issued a formal notification for negotiations.
A sustained freight stoppage carries costs well beyond the sector, since almost all inland movement of food, fuel and manufactured goods travels by road.
