Price hike adds fuel to public ange

CHENNAI: With fuel prices raised from Wednesday, the public is feeling the heat  again with stakeholders taking the most beating. While some businesspersons are worried about the price hike affecting their transport expenses for their products and commodities, others are worried about their daily expenses increasing. “I drive nearly 200 km everyday.  My wife uses a bike and so do my children. How are we to put up with such ridiculous and repetitive price hikes? I run a fruit shop, so I have to get the fruits transported from one end to the others, now the truck drivers will charge me more and that is going to definitely impact my business as well,” said N. C. Alexander, an apple importer. Blaming the government for this new development, Alexander said, “ We are regularly reading the papers, we know how much crude oil costs and yet the petrol prices are continuing to increase.  I will only be able to show my frustration once in five years, hopefully this time my vote will have some impact.”

Hike in diesel oil prices has hit sand and brick lorry associations that are already worried  about a probable hike in a toll rates in April. “If the hike is less, say below Rs 1.50, we can’t recover the costs from consumers. With  increasing petrol and diesel costs, prices of other things like rubber and tires will go up affectign us. The inflated prices of such products don’t go down when petrol prices fall, so the effect is bad,” said Yuvaraj, president of Sand Lorry Owners Federation.

“When there is a steep increase, the cost of sand loads and bricks increases. All this  has a bad impact in the market and on consumers. To discuss this, we will have a state meeting on insurance and probable increase of toll rates on April 3,” he added. Karuna M, an auto driver, explained how the hike would impact him and his peers the most because this new hike means lesser money to provide to his family, “ Even the tiniest of roads have become one-way now, we have to take roundabouts even for short distances. With all these problems they end up increasing the petrol prices too. This  means lesser money to spend on my family, I have to think twice before I can buy my children gifts too.”