FOR photojournalists like myself, mobility is a key part of the job. We are expected to be present when news breaks, to capture action, emotion and provide visual reference for the reporting of our colleagues.

The US-Israeli invasion of Iran has been dominating headlines for several months now, but its impact is directly felt by those whose household budgets have been thrown out of whack by inordinate hikes in fuel prices.

When the Prime Minister’s Special Relief Scheme was announced last week, I was one of the multitudes who breathed a sigh of relief at the prospect of some respite from rising fuel costs.

But just how easy is it to avail the facility? To answer this question, I decided to enrol myself for the Rs100 per litre discount available to motorcyclists, and visited several fuel pumps across the city to see whether it is actually benefitting ordinary people.

Despite some teething issues, govt has been learning from the hiccups witnessed during the first week of PM’s fuel relief scheme

On Sunday, Information Minister Attaullah Tarar announced that over 2.2 million people from across the country had signed up for the fuel price relief, with more than 90pc of them owning motorcycles, rickshaws or Qingqis.

I must confess I was not one of those who signed up for the scheme immediately after it was announced. This is because I had heard about the press conference held by the Pakistan Petroleum Dealers Association, where they complained about a lack of clarity on how they would be compensated for the discounted fuel.

The next day, after my colleagues assured me that the dealers’ payment issues had been resolved, I visited a few petrol pumps to see what the process was like.

I made a bee-line for the cashier at the first pump and asked him directly, “Are people really getting Rs100 per litre relief?”

He told me that if one has the required SMS, one can get discounted petrol after verification.

Hearing this, I went to the kiosk he indicated. There, pump staff took my mobile phone and checked my details. After verification, I received five litres of petrol at the discounted rate. So far, so good.

Others weren’t so lucky, though. One of my colleagues told me they had witnessed an early morning altercation at a North Karachi fuel pump.

The reason was that the person who operated the subsidy kiosk would show up at 9am, meaning that most office-going commuters weren’t able to avail the facility during their morning commute.

So, after filling up my own bike, I went to other pumps to observe the process. There, I observed Eastern ingenuity (read Jugaar) at work.

At the time, the relief scheme only allowed you to get five litres, not less. In case someone doesn’t need five litres, there wasn’t any provision for ‘saving’ some of the fuel quota for later, as the token generated was valid for a single transaction only.

However, some industrious bikers had come up with a harmonious solution; to share the tokens. There were a couple of occasions when two motorcyclists would arrive at the pump together.

If one needed let’s say, two litres and the other needed three, they would just use one token and get both bikes filled up. Such cooperation may or may not be fully kosher as far as the scheme was concerned, but it did make life easier for the common motorcyclist.

While I was watching people get fuel, another thought struck me: not everyone has Rs2,000 to spare for fuel. What about the daily wager, or the student, who only has a limited amount of money and wish to avail the fuel subsidy? If they cannot pay for the full five litres, they are effectively left out.

This is exactly what happened as I witnessed a number of people leaving without taking discounted petrol, even though they were registered for the scheme.

Admittedly, the government has been learning from the hiccups experienced by beneficiaries of the relief scheme over the first week of its rollout.

Later the same day, I heard that the government had revised their rules, and the five-litre compulsion had been dropped, and SMS charges waived for those registering for the scheme.

This seems like a logical step, and one hopes that in the days to come, the scheme will become more user-friendly, so more and more people can benefit from it.

Published in Dawn, September 21st, 2026