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Published on March 1, 2008

Justice Charnchai Sawaeng-sak also ruled that the injunction should be valid until August 1, meaning that new taxis registered between then and now could still use the driver-friendly LPG fuel system, use of which had been restricted by the ministry's rule from January 2.

The injunction was also ordered against the Land Transport Department, which refused registrations requested for a large number of new taxis whose owners had refused to install NGV between January 3 and yesterday. The petition was lodged by Wichet Thiengthong on behalf of all individual and corporate taxi-operators, which comprises more than 80,000 drivers and thousands of support staff. The petition called

the rule unfair and discriminatory against consumers as a whole.

In its verdict, the court said it had heeded complaints that it took one to two hours to fill an NGV tank and each driver needed to do so twice a day in a six-hour shift to cover an average 300 kilometres a day.

NGV nozzles have limited availability, and there is an insufficient number of PTT petrol stations nationwide, it said.

PTT monopolises NGV production and sales and has not licensed NGV operations to other oil-producers, whereas LPG nozzles are abundant and it takes less than five minutes to fill an LPG tank, which needs be done once a day.

The Nation