CPC plans to increase Kerosene prices to avoid misuse by heavy vehicles

The Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC)  had devised a plan to increase kerosene price in keeping up with the prices of other fuel types while ensuring a mechanism to provide kerosene at subsidiary price for low income groups including fisherfolk and farmers.

The Chairman of the Petroleum Corporation, Janaka Rajakaruna told  Timesonline that they have decided to provide the kerosene oil subsidy for under-privileged persons and the fishing community under a QR code. The decision was made during a meeting held last week.

Accordingly, kerosene oil prices would be increased to a price similar to diesel prices after considering the world fuel prices.

“The Petroleum is bearing losses to provide kerosene for subsidized price, the subsidy was for farming and fishing community persons, but that was misused by some, which is an unethical and offensive move. Therefore we would not allow this kind of activities to be carried out further”, he said

The move come as a  large number of heavy vehicles including buses on the road across the country are running on hazardous combinations of cocktails consisting of mainly kerosene oil mixed with diesel and crude oil as a cost-cutting mechanism by operators.

Kerosene oil, heavily subsidized for farmers and fisherfolk under low- income category is being increasingly used by the operators to bring down the cost of operation even at the expense of their long term use of diesel engines in addition to environmental pollution.