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Almost every other day Gopaldas Upadhyaya drives his decade-old car to one of Bombay's 22 filling stations and waits for up to four hours for a refill.
"The queues are long and I often lose a day's earnings just waiting to refill the cylinder," he says.
His is just one of 20,000 taxis on Bombay's roads fitted with compressed natural gas cylinders that have been hit by a severe shortage of outlets selling the fuel.
With all 30,000 taxis in the city expected to convert to CNG engines by the year-end, the shortage of outlets is raising the hackles of the city's cabbies. With not enough filling stations to supply CNG, the crisis is expected to continue indefinitely.
Cabbies say they would soon have to resort to strikes like their counterparts in Delhi who too are grappling with a CNG shortage.
Union Petroleum Minister Ram Naik said during a recent visit to Bombay that it would not be possible for his ministry to set up additional CNG filling stations.
Oil companies in the city say land prices do not allow more fuel stations to be set up in Bombay and its suburbs. "Landlords who had rented property to existing petrol pumps are demanding increased rent and in some cases taking back their property to put up commercial structures," an official of Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited told IANS.
The provision of CNG facilities in existing petrol stations would also mean huge investments, something small petrol pump owners refuse to make.
The Bombay Taximen's Association has demanded that more outlets selling CNG be set up across the city. The union has urged the Maharashtra government to allow its remaining members to ply their vehicles using petrol and diesel engines.
It has also demanded that the government bring out a white paper on the issue to spur a public debate.
Officials feel the recent central government move to permit liquefied petroleum gas to be used as fuel in motor vehicles could help alleviate the problems. However this won't go down easily with Bombay's cabbies.
"I have just spent Rs 35,000 to install a new CNG engine. I won't be able to buy a new engine at short notice," says Ramdayal Yadav, a taxi driver.
Taxis in Bombay began to be fitted with CNG engines last year when the Bombay High Court ordered the implementation of Euro II pollution norms to improve the quality of air.
Environmentalists who favour the use of CNG over other alternatives say it is the cleanest fuel. Data put out by the Centre for Science and Environment, Delhi, states that CNG is 92 percent methane, which burns more efficiently.
Environmental groups monitoring pollution in Bombay say there has been a sharp fall in suspended particulate matter, an indicator of pollution, since cabs converted to CNG engines
Indo-Asian News Service
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