Fuel shortage persists in Eastern Province

Sat, 25 Aug 2012 12:38:55 +0000

A fuel shortage has hit parts of Eastern Province as motorists are forced to drive to provincial town Chipata to fetch the commodity.

A check by the Daily Nation revealed that Nyimba and Petauke Puma Filing stations had run out of the commodity for the past three days.

Some motorists found queuing for the commodity from the road side sellers commonly known as ‘changayna’ blamed the shortage on government’ poor management of the energy industry.

Ackim Zulu said that government has never shown any seriousness to address the fuel crisis.

Another motorist Ben Phiri said for the past three days motorists have been driving to Chipata as Katete had also run out of the commodity too.

Mr Phiri said it was disappointing that at a time government had announced the marketing season some parts of the country have been experiencing these shortages.

Mr Phiri advised that it was high time government addressed a fuel crisis before it got out of hand.

He accused government of not telling the truth after the fuel donation to neighbouring Malawi.

He said it was three days now that some districts in the province have had no commodity and were just wondering why government could not resolve the problem.

This was not the first time this year that some parts of the country were experiencing fuel shortages.

A few months ago Eastern Province was among the provinces that were hit with shortage of the commodity that was caused by a pipe broke age at Tazama.

But efforts to get a comment from energy permanent secretary George Zulu proved futile as his cell phone went unanswered.

Many parts of the country has recently suffered from intermittent fuel shortages blamed on inefficient oil companies which have been accused of failing to pay for supplies from Indeni.

Apparently, Indeni has introduced a cash payment system which has disadvantaged a number of companies that were dependent on credit allocation.

The most affected have outlined provinces that including provinces including northern, western and eastern provinces.

Last month, the shortage crippled a number of towns an southern Province including Choma and Mazabuka to the less extent in Livingstone were motorist were forced to drive into Zimbabwe to refuel.