Employees of the Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation (BOST) have shown bad faith by resisting calls for the CEO’s interdiction over the contaminated fuel saga, Executive Director of the Chamber of Petroleum Consumers, Duncan Amoah has said.
The employees, in a petition addressed to the Minister of Energy, Chief of Staff, and the Minister of National Security on Thursday argued that calls for the dismissal of their CEO was uncalled for since “the sale of off-spec products is not new to the operations of BOST.”
They explained that “BOST receives request from dealers of Off-spec products and this dates back from 2014, 2015 and 2016, but in all these situations, we saw nothing untoward.The same process was followed in the sale of the recent one.”
They therefore called on the “general public to disregard the call by Minority in Parliament for the interdiction of the MD of BOST…and support the MD’s quest to ensuring that all who have aided in looting the nation through BOST are duly punished.”
But Mr. Duncan Amoah, in a rebuttal, said their demands will only “deepen controversy surrounding this whole transaction that has led to this brouhaha.”
He believes their demands are not only “ridiculous but indeed unfounded.”
Justifying calls for the BOST Director’s interdiction, Mr. Duncan pointed out that, Ghanaians and the relevant stakeholders have the right to demand for accountability from BOST since they “continue to pay 3 pesewas per litre to keep BOST working.”
“When such incidents happen, in the interest of going forward, we would want to get to the bottom of it to forestall any future re-occurrence,” he added.
Meanwhile, the President of the Association of Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs), Kwaku Agyemang Duah, has said both the OMCs and the National Petroleum Authority (NPA), have intensified surveillance at various fuel stations since the development.
“We noted grave concerns about this issue and we are working very hard with the National Petroleum Authority to make sure we don’t get this product into various stations. The NPA has been making some surveillance and we want to assure our customers that they should not panic.”
“We are coming against the backdrop of when we started talking about illegal fuel; since then, we have been very vigilant in our stations, trying to make sure that we don’t have any unwanted fuel…,” Mr. Duah said
He revealed that the NPA has been able to track about nine out of the ten tracks of contaminated fuel, adding that both the OMCs and NPA “are working to make sure that we track all of them.”
