Fuel supply improves

THE petrol shortage that gripped most parts of the country in the last one week has fizzled out and normalcy returned to most service stations after the 30 million litres of the commodity imported by the Government started arriving in the country.

Energy Minister, Kenneth Konga said in an interview in Lusaka yesterday that huge consignments of both petrol and diesel were arriving in the country on a daily basis.

Mr Konga said the consignments were part of the 30 million litres of petrol and 50 million litres imported by the Government from Independent Petroleum Group of Kuwait and Kenya’s Dalbit Petroleum.

He could, however, not say how much of the two commodities was being received everyday.
The supplies are being ferried directly to Lusaka and Ndola.

Mr Konga said on a daily basis, about 400,000 litres of petrol were being released to Lusaka while Copperbelt was receiving 200,000 litres of petrol and 100,000 litres of the commodity were being distributed to the rest of the country.

At the service stations surveyed in Lusaka yesterday, there were no queues of motor vehicles which had charaterised the premises during the period of shortage as the filling stations had started operating normally.

At Ravasia filling station in the town centre, the fuel attendants were operating normally and there were ample stocks of both petrol and diesel for customers.

A fuel attendant who sought anonymity said the station had 13,000 litres of unleaded petrol and was expecting to receive 14,000 litres of diesel yesterday.

At British Petroleum (BP) service station on Cairo Road, assistant supervisor, Timothy Simuyembo said the filing station had 10,000 litres of petrol and 8,000 litres of diesel.

Total filling station on Freedom Way had 4,380 litres of unleaded petrol and 8,200 litres of diesel.

Another filling station that had petrol and diesel was Petroda in Garden Township and motorists were buying the fuel at their own time.

At Kobil filling station on Ben Bella Road, the officials said that they had 7,000 litres of petrol.

Station supervisor, Yona Muyobe said diesel finished on Saturday and they were still waiting for a truck to offload the commodity today.

Petrol at Caltex on Bena Bella Road was still in abundance but the filling station had no diesel.

Engen on the same road had 10,000 litres of petrol but diesel finished on Saturday.
Ody’s filling station on Great East Road had completely run out of both petrol and diesel but the fuel attendants said some trucks were being expected yesterday in the evening.

However, scores of motorists such as taxi and bus drivers complained that the fuel crisis had caused them severe losses in their businesses because they bought petrol from fuel vendors at exorbitant prices.

Andrew Musonda, a taxi driver, said he was unable to meet his daily target because of the high price of petrol he used to buy from vendors at K50,000 per five litres.

[Times of Zambia]