None of the petrol pumps in the Barisal region has licence and clearance certificate from the Department of Environment.
The Bangladesh Petrol Pump Owners’ Association, Barisal unit and the DoE divisional office sources have acknowledged it.There are 36 petrol pumps in six districts of the division, including 11 in the city and four in Barisal district.
Sukumar Biswas, divisional director of the DoE Barisal office, said every petrol pump and refuelling stations must have no objection report and licence from the DoE to operate business and service as per direction of the Bangladesh Environment Conservation Rule 1993 (revised 2013) and section 15(1) of the Bangladesh Environment Conservation Act 1995 (revised 2010).
‘They have to get clearance certificate and licence from us as they deal with environmental hazardous materials,’ he explained.
However none of them in Barisal as yet has got it and so the DoE has primarily issued notice against nine petrol pumps in the city.
The pumps served with the notice are Messrs Auto Service, College Road Filling Station, Lily Filling Station, Rupatali Filling Station, Dost Traders, Israil Talukdar Filling Station 1 and 2, Unique Filling Station, Ichhakathi Filling Station, DoE divisional office sources said.
They added that owners of the petrol pumps were been given one month from the date of the receiving the notification to apply for licence.
Waliullah Khan, secretary of the Bangladesh Petrol Pump Owners Association, Barisal divisional unit, said owners of the petrol pumps have to get licence from so many authorities for operating business and every day the number of these authorities is increasing.
‘We are running our business on the basis of the Bangladesh Petroleum Act, 1934, as amended in 2010 and the Bangladesh Petroleum Rules, 1937 and receiving licence from the Department of Explosives,’ he said.
Even after that, the government has imposed DoE Act (Revised 2010) and Rules (Revised 2013) and Bangladesh Energy Regulatory Commission Act, 2003 on the petrol pumps, he said.
‘To get every type of licence we have to pay Tk 50,000 to Tk 5 lakh depending on the monthly sale and to pay 25 to 50 per cent of what one paid for licence during yearly renewal,’ he informed.
Owners of petrol pumps and filling stations have alleged that different agencies of the government were unnecessarily imposing various charges on them in the name of regulations when their business was passing through tough times.
The pump owners threatened that they might go for strike in protest at the ‘irrational decisions’ and appealed for setting
up a single authority to control petrol pump business.
-With New Age input
