The shortage of petrol, has hit Kabwe town also, where motorists are queuing up at filling stations waiting for the commodity.
A check by ZANIS by 08:00hrs this morning found that all the six filling stations in the town did not have petrol.
At Petrotech, Walter Farinacci, the station’s supervisor told ZANIS that the last stocks of petrol finished yesterday, while the station had sufficient diesel.
He however hinted that he was expecting 7000 litres of petrol this morning, which he said would not last long, in view of the fact that the whole town did not have the commodity.
Only one total filling station by this morning did not have both diesel and petrol while the rest had at least some diesel.
It was not known as to when petrol would be received in the rest of the filling stations.
Motorists spoken to blamed government for not having prepared for what they termed as a crisis.
Mr. Michelo Chimuka said it was sad that motorists were subjected to queues when government was aware that at this time of the year there would be this kind of a situation.
[ZANIS]
Chabipa mwe bantu. Twambe nayimbi imilaini. We are not ready to start queuing un neccesarily. S. t .u. .p. i. d Bwezani.
this one piece of shit management
So what do you expect?? it will spread all over the country!!!!
We wont be affected this end, we are happy.
We need more than one oil refinery in Zambia. Indeni is old and prone to faults. In 1998 Indeni burned down and was offline till 2000. In that period Znoc imported refines petroleum products by rail and road tankers at great cost. Because 2001 elections were round teh corner, FTJ govt did not allow Znoc to raise petrol prices toi reflect the increase cost of importation. As a result the company accumulated so much debt. The IMF and World bank did not allow Govt to recapitalise ZNOC so it could stand on its feet after Indeni re-started. Result – Znoc was liquidated in 2002.
When Indeni get bogged down, you have to import fuel at extra cost. Who is picking the bill for that today, is it govt?
We need more refineries to secure supplies. Wish you well back home.
All this back ward thinking was caused by Indeni and others in the distribution chain. They hand anticiapted a hike in fuel price by Finance Minister in his BUDGET address to parliament like in the past the price of uel increased by so so % and pump prices will change with effect from mid night. This time around the opposite happened. So the major players wanted to make a kill on old stock and they were caught on the wrong footing by Dr. Musokwatane. Its just a matter of days the situation will normalise.What can energy regulation has got to tell us. Mr. Chairman the whole thing is kokayi lining the pockets or maximising profits even its not the right time. This is time I expected the nosey NGO’s to takeTazama, Indeni, BP. Caltex, ERB ,Konga and Mumba & others to task on fuel affected us…
This is a shame.