A protest over gas, flour and fuel
The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) staged a protest rally in Lahore on Sunday against the shortage of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and rising flour and fuel prices, bringing household cost pressures onto the streets of Punjab’s capital. Party leaders warned that if gas outages continue, they will stage a sit-in outside the head office of Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL), the company responsible for gas distribution in the region.
The rally, led by PPP Lahore President Faisal Mir, focused on the everyday impact of shortages and price rises rather than on abstract economic policy. For households that rely on LPG for cooking and heating, a shortage is not a statistic; it means searching for cylinders, paying more when they are found, or going without. Combined with higher flour and fuel prices, the rally’s message was that the cost of basic living is rising faster than people’s ability to cope.
What the PPP alleged
Mr Mir said the public could not be left at the mercy of inflation and illegal profiteers. He accused sellers of creating an artificial LPG shortage in order to sell fuel at arbitrary prices, describing the practice as tantamount to robbing the people. In his account, the problem is not only supply, but manipulation: scarcity, whether real or manufactured, allows prices to be pushed up beyond what households can afford.
He also blamed SNGPL for poor planning, arguing that gas outages were adding to citizens’ hardships. The criticism links two issues that are often treated separately — the availability of LPG cylinders and the reliability of piped gas supply — into a single complaint about energy planning and management. When both falter at the same time, households have fewer alternatives and face higher costs whichever option they turn to.
Mr Mir further argued that the government was placing an additional financial burden on the public by raising petrol prices, at a time when inflation had already made life difficult for working people and the salaried classes. His demands followed from that diagnosis: an uninterrupted LPG supply, prices set in line with people’s purchasing power, and relief for domestic consumers.
Small traders versus big hoarders
A notable strand of the rally’s message concerned enforcement. Mr Mir said small shopkeepers were being targeted instead of big hoarders, and he urged the government to act without discrimination against what he called the LPG mafia, hoarders and illegal profiteers. He called for an uninterrupted gas supply at full pressure, a demand that goes beyond LPG cylinders to the piped network itself.
Why household energy prices matter politically
Energy and food prices are among the most politically sensitive issues in Pakistan because they touch every household budget directly. A rise in the price of flour, fuel or cooking gas is noticed immediately at the shop and in the kitchen. The PPP’s position is complicated by its own role in national politics, where it is a key ally of the ruling coalition, so a protest by an allied party carries a different message from a protest by a party in outright opposition.
What the PPP threatened next
Mr Mir said the party would stage a protest and sit-in in front of the SNGPL head office if load-shedding does not end. That escalation, if carried out, would move the campaign from a rally to a direct confrontation with the gas utility, raising the stakes for both the company and the authorities responsible for energy supply.
Whether that happens will depend on whether supply improves and prices stabilise in the coming days. If shortages ease, the rally may remain a warning shot. If they persist, the PPP has now publicly committed itself to further action, and its credibility in Lahore will partly be judged by whether it follows through.
For households, the test is simpler: whether gas is available, at what price, and whether flour and fuel costs stop rising. Until those questions are answered in the market, the political argument over who is responsible — sellers, planners, hoarders or government — is likely to continue.
Source: Dawn, 26 October 2026.
