Daily Independent Online.
*
Thursday, June 17, 2004.
Six filling stations shut in Imo over profiteering
By Ben Duru
Correspondent, Owerri
The Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR)
has sealed six fuel stations in Imo State for selling premium motor spirit
above the control price of between N38 and N40 per litre.
Four of the petrol stations were sealed
along the Aba/Owerri Road near Naze in Owerri metropolis, from where the DPR
team started their monitoring exercise.
The sealing is coming on the heels of the
demand by the Imo branch of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) asking for mobile
policemen and soldiers to accompany them in monitoring the activities of oil
marketers in the state.
According to the Secretary of the congress, Isdore Opara, the
lack of adequate security to effectively monitor the goings-on at the various fuel
outlets in the state has made it possible for the marketers to sell the
petroleum products above approved prices.
Speaking with Daily Independent shortly after the
recent NLC strike, the secretary expressed worry that NLC in Imo cannot monitor
what was going on like their counterparts in other states of the federation
because of the lack of security.
He lamented that most of the fuel stations
now sell fuel at a very exorbitant prices and that the arm of government
saddled with the responsibility of curtailing these activities has succumbed to
monetary inducements from the marketers.
Opara said that on several occasions they
have accosted the government task force on petroleum products and each time
they would offer one excuse or the other “and yet you continue to see
that the prices have refused to come down.”
He insisted that it was only labour, if
provided with adequate security, that can curtail the arbitrary increases which
have become a part of Imo history since the last increment, adding, “The
marketers know that they cannot bribe us and that is why they are frustrating
all our efforts to get government to arm us.”
Opara lamented further that petroleum
products such as fuel now cost above N60 a litre while kerosene is nowhere to
be seen, and where it is found now cost above N100 a litre. He wondered how
government can allow such unwarranted increment at this time.
He called on the government task force and
those whose duty it is to call the marketers to order to do so before the
masses take the laws into their hands, insisting that there was a limit to what
the people can endure at any given time.
