PetroChina providing free refills to bikers
Migrant workers going home by motorcycle during the upcoming Spring Festival will be offered free refueling services by PetroChina’s subsidiaries in Fujian, Jiangxi, Hunan and Hubei provinces in 2018.
In addition to the free refueling service, motorcyclist will also be provided free meals, free ginger soup, free maps, motorcycle repair service and motorcycle engine oil recycling, said China National Petroleum Corp, the country’s largest oil and gas supplier and producer, also known as PetroChina.
The oil giant has also bought traffic accident insurance worth of 300,000 yuan ($45,281) for the motorcyclists and prepared several rest lounges to make the festival trip home better, safer and more pleasant, especially for motorcyclists who must brave rain or snow on the long and arduous ride back to their hometowns.
State-owned oil and gas giant PetroChina said this is the sixth year the company has offered free refueling services for migrant workers during the annual family reunion trip during the Spring Festival, and 134,000 people have benefited from the service.
Each year, many migrant workers have to ride a motorcycle back home because they either couldn’t afford a ticket or have no access to it as the passenger volume far exceeds the capacity for railways and long-distance buses, said Chen Shangyuan, director of PetroChina Fujian market.
The 40-day Spring Festival travel rush this year, starting in January, witnessed 357 million train trips, an increase of 10.1 percent from the same period in 2016, according to the China Railway Corporation. A daily average of 8.93 million people traveled by train during the period.
PetroChina has offered free motorcycle refueling services at the subsidiaries along the national and provincial highways in Fujian since 2012 and has expanded the service to four provinces during the past five years, four of the country’s provinces with the biggest migrant worker populations, said Chen.
According to PetroChina, the company has adjusted its locations for free refueling services based on the traffic flow during the past few years so as to cover more motorcyclists.