Pump price of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) also called petrol may increase following what marketers described as ‘Act Of Sabotage ‘ by haulage operators across the country.
According to findings by LEADERSHIP, tanker drivers are imposing illegal charges on marketers ranging from between N50,000 to N100,000 per 33,000 litres petrol tanker capacity.
According to the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN), the charges are not only illegal but arbitrary and are adding to operational cost borne by members.
Confirming the development to our Correspondent, national President of IPMAN, Elder Chinedu Okoronkwo, warned that if Federal Government fails to prevail on the Petroleum Tanker Drivers (PTD), to stop the imposition of illegal levies on her members, it may lead to hike in pump price of petrol.
He said a meeting of the Central Working Committee (CWC) of IPMAN held recently in Abuja, during when they raised concerns on the implication of the action as well as informing the Federal Government and the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) of the act of sabotage being perpetrated by tanker drivers in the distribution of products.
Okoronkwo said: “We want the Federal government and NNPCL to be aware that Petroleum Tanker Drivers (PTD) is allegedly the number one enemy of fuel subsidy removal and deregulation,”.
He said that the PTD had allegedly exhibited an act of sabotage on PMS distribution by levying IPMAN members for each truck loaded at the depot.
According to him, the charges differ depending at what depot the marketer is loading.
The president further said “the levy imposed on their IPMAN members by tanker drivers had further depleted the little profit left for them to keep their fuel distribution business going, as a truck load of PMS initially which initially costs them about seven million naira to load but with the subsidy removal, had been pushed to above 23 million naira to load and transport the same product to their various fuel stations and we have been fighting extortion by petroleum tanker drivers for about 10 years now and we have been telling them that this market is based on profit but our pleas had fallen on deaf ears.”
The tanker drivers,he said, have been extorting different amounts from our members and in some cases charging N200,000 which he said would have stopped with the removal of subsidy.
He disclosed that, IPMAN members make a profit of only N500,000 on each truck of PMS after making over N23 million and which take days or weeks to sell.
Okoronkwo said marketers also pay other logistics charges from the meagre profit, like providing fuel for the truck that will carry the product, providing fuel for the engine that will carry light at the stations and so on and at the end of the day, they are left with about N200,000, or slightly above it.
