Federal Ministers Atta Tarar, Shaza Fatima Khawaja and Ali Pervaiz Malik led a joint press conference, announcing the implementation of a targeted petrol relief program, which was launched by the then Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.
The subsidy scheme specifically aims to offer direct economic support to lower and middle income citizens and is targeted at owners of 2 wheelers and vehicles with an engine capacity of up to 800 cc.
As per the stipulated conditions of the scheme, the two-wheeler holders would get a relief of up to 20 litres of petrol while the eligible vehicles having up to 800 cc would get a subsidy of up to 30 litres of petrol.
Minister Shaza Fatima emphasised how the government has designed the quota carefully to be balanced and to benefit the population as much as possible.
Atta Tarar also revealed that big cars are excluded from this scheme.
Implementation of the petrol relief scheme is broken into two main stages: user registration is compulsory, followed by implementation of the scheme.
Citizens have to provide their Computerised National Identity Card (CNIC) number through SMS from the official SIM card, which is registered under the name of the citizen on their CNIC.
Registration information for their vehicle or motorcycle must be provided, including the proper province or city where the vehicle or motorcycle is registered.
The vehicle registration date is required and the applicants will need to have the right ownership documents for the date of the vehicle verification.
If any information is missing or wrong then the system will automatically send an SMS with the information stating exactly what is missing.
According to Minister Shaza Fatima this registration is a single process and once the user registers on the system he/she will be permanently registered with the system.
Upon registration, citizens at a fuel station can avail the relief they are targeting by sending an SMS containing the word “TOK” to 9771.
In response to the security issue, the minister warned of the possible engagement in scams and said that the Government of Pakistan never asks for the payment of fees or asks for token numbers through SMS.
She warned citizens not to give personal information and CNIC to anyone without their authorisation and stated that the government does not collect service charges and does not ask for sensitive personal information via any unsolicited message.