The Ministry of Power & Energy today introduced the National Fuel Pass allowing the general public to purchase a guaranteed quota of fuel per week.
Accordingly, one vehicle can be registered under one National Identity Card, Passport, or Business Registration Number. Registrations are open via fuelpass.gov.lk website.
"A QR code will be allocated to each vehicle following the registration and verification of the chassis number and other details. Once the registration is done it will take us about 3 or 4 days for us to determine what the quota is going to be. Each vehicle category will be given a guaranteed weekly quota," Minister Kanchana Wijesekara said.
"The members of the public can obtain fuel twice a week according to the last digit of the number plate, using the QR code assigned to them. But these will coming into effect only after the ministry announces the date it to be implemented. Once we announced the date CPC and LIOC both will follow QR mechanism to issue fuel."
This is an excellent solution to manage the current fuel crisis in the country. Thanks to the MoE & other institutes for developing this web based solution. There will be issues at the beginning but once those issues were resolved it will function smoothly. Everybody should support this rather than criticizing it based on minor defects which could be rectified easily. The Govt should pay immediate attention in to the following critical facts for success of the solution.
1. Availability of the fuel at filling stations throughout 7 days of the week. This may not be an impossible thing as the fuel is issued to vehicles based on a quota system depending on the Government’s ability to purchase fuel.
2. Preventing sale of fuel out side the fuel-pass system by filling station owners to their friends and black market. This could be done through proper reconciliation of stocks supplied to the filling station and sold through the fuel-pass system. Ceypetco/LIOC should replenish only the stocks sold through fuel-pass system to the filling stations.
Once the system stabilized and operated for one/two months, Govt can think of relaxing the limitations and do away with the restriction of pumping fuel based on the last digit of the vehicle number and allow them to pump their quota on any day of the week. Also, instead of a weekly quota, a monthly quota can be introduced so that vehicle owner can get their full quota or part thereof on any day of the month at their convenience. This will help to further reduce congestion at the filling stations.