Last Updated on September 20, 2026 by YeJahan
SARIM NAFEES
ISLAMABAD (Sept 19): Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar on Saturday chaired a critical meeting of the National Steering Committee for Fuel Subsidy to review the implementation of the Prime Minister’s special relief scheme.
The committee was handed an optimistic briefing stating that the digital infrastructure is finally holding up, and the vast majority of petrol pumps across the country are now live on the system. They claim citizens are actively using their fuel tokens at the pump, and if someone is not registered yet, all it takes is a simple text message to 9771.
But to their credit, someone in that room finally looked past the spreadsheet and recognized a glaring real-world problem: what about the folks living in areas with zero internet connectivity? A fancy digital token isn’t worth a rupee if you can’t get a signal.
The committee then decided that petrol pumps in these digital deserts will bypass the internet entirely. Instead, they will use basic, old-school SMS text messages to redeem the fuel tokens.
Directives were immediately slapped onto the desks of administrations in Azad Jammu & Kashmir, Gilgit-Baltistan, and the provinces. The order was simple: get us an exact, immediate list of these off-grid stations so we can wire them into the scheme without delay. We’ll see how fast that paperwork actually moves.
Meanwhile, the State Bank of Pakistan informed the committee that every single payment claim received over the last three days has been settled in full.
Ishaq Dar issued strict instructions to start scrubbing the master ledger, asking them to hunt down the pumps that are permanently boarded up, or the ones that only sell diesel, and kick them off the list entirely. The whole point of this cleanup is to ensure the government’s data matches actual ground realities, not office paperwork.
The Deputy Prime Minister also recognized the hard work of the provincial administrations and the State Bank’s cooperation.
But before anyone could celebrate, Dar laid down the law, reminding the room of a fundamental truth: all these systems, all this tech, and all these meetings don’t mean a damn thing if the delivery fails. He emphasized that the relief must reach the hands of the eligible citizens, and it needs to happen without a single roadblock.
Copyright YeJahan News Network, 2026
