By SILUMESI MALUMO
FUEL has started coming in the country in bulk and the situation has now improved so there is no need for the public to panic, Minister of Energy Mathew Nkhuwa has said.
Mr Nkhuwa said yesterday when he toured the Tazama plant, currently the oil company was offloading about 50 trucks of fuel every day.
“What we have found out here is that we have quite a good number of trucks coming with both petrol and diesel. The situation has tremendously improved than it was last week.
Last week you couldn’t find this number of trucks offloading. Obviously after zero rating Value Added Tax and the removal of excise duty trucks are now flowing in,” he said.
Mr Nkhuwa said “To those who are buying fuel for resale they will just be stuck with it and at the end of the day they end up burning their houses and families.
He said alot of fuel had started coming in, therefore, people would not buy the commodity at expensive prices from those buying for resale.
The minister said the fuel shortage was caused by panic buying especially by those who want to resale.
Mr Nkhuwa said the situation was now coming back to normal, and that within this week, things would stabilise.
He was happy that oil marketing companies such as Tazama, Total, and Puma had been working around the clock to ensure that the commodity was available in the country. Mr Nkhuwa urged them to continue with the same spirit especially when the country was in dire need of the commodity.
“This is how it supposed to be to see that you have been even working at night to ensure that fuel which is offloaded is taken to a number of filling stations across the country,” he said.
Meanwhile PUMA Lusaka site manager Chinyemba Kalama said the company had been receiving fuel from Tanzania and Mozambique on a daily basis.
And Total Head of Retail and Digital Ernest Mfula said on Sunday last week about 23 trucks offloaded fuel, stating that as of yesterday about 15 trucks offloaded the commodity.
He said that as the commodity was coming in it was being distributed to various clients.
