Soaring LPG prices squeeze Pakistan's rickshaw drivers, forcing families to cut back on meals
Liquefied petroleum gas prices have surged in Pakistan since two Iranian border crossings closed on 17 October, halting imports, leaving rickshaw drivers earning less than half what they once did and forcing some families to eat only twice a day.
For 13 years, Rashid Ali has driven a three-wheeled motorised rickshaw around Lahore in eastern Pakistan, starting at 6 a.m. and sometimes working until midnight, and for most of that time he earned about $6.50 a day, enough for his family's bare essentials.
Now, with liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) prices surging, he does not even make half that, Reuters reported on Tuesday, 3 November, and his family has cut back on meals, eating only twice a day.
Ali, 33, is among thousands of Pakistani drivers who run their vehicles on LPG, which is sold in cylinders and is mainly used for cooking and heating, and which the chairman of the Awami Rickshaw Union, Majeed Ghauri, calls the fuel of the poor.
Ghauri said about 70 per cent of the union's 43,000 auto-rickshaws and nearly 8,000 Qingqis, motorcycle-based three-wheelers that carry several passengers on set routes, run on LPG, so a sharp rise in the fuel's price cuts directly into drivers' daily take-home pay.
LPG prices have surged since 17 October, when two Iranian border crossings closed, halting imports, traders told Reuters, in the latest energy shock since the United States-Iran war began in February.
Before the border closures, Pakistan imported about 7,000 metric tons of LPG a day from Iran, the Pakistan LPG Association said, and traders said the price of a 12-kilogram cylinder jumped 56 per cent within days of the closure, to 7,000 Pakistani rupees, or about 583 rupees per kilogram in the open market.
The government of Balochistan, the southern province that borders Iran, cited security and smuggling for the decision to close the crossings, while Iran's foreign ministry said technical issues were to blame, leaving drivers and traders caught between two explanations and no quick restoration of supply.
The arithmetic of a driver's day shows why the increase bites so hard: Ali pays 600 rupees a day to rent his rickshaw, filling up with gas four or five times a day at 300 to 400 rupees a time, so when the fuel price rises, the rent and the refuelling costs stay fixed while what is left for his family shrinks.
The LPG shock is landing on top of wider price pressures in Pakistan: inflation hit 9.6 per cent in October, and the central bank last week raised interest rates to 12 per cent, citing energy and wheat prices, while petrol hit a record 458 rupees a litre on 3 April and remains about 40 per cent above its pre-war price.
For households that cook with LPG as well as drivers who run on it, the same cylinder price rise hits twice, once at the stove and once on the road, and for families already cutting meals, that double hit is what turns a fuel shortage at the border into a daily question of how much food can be afforded.
What happens next depends largely on whether the Iranian border crossings reopen and Iranian LPG imports resume, and on whether the authorities intervene in the open-market price, but until either happens, drivers like Ali face the same calculation each morning: longer hours on the road for less money at the end of the day.
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