The Chamber of Petroleum Consumers of Ghana (COPEC) has slammed government’s treatment of the LGP gas filling stations following the gas explosion at the Atomic junction in Accra.
Seven people died in the explosion with over 130 others suffering various degrees of injury.
President Akufo-Addo after a cabinet meeting on the incident last week ordered a shut down of all “high risk” LPG stations in the country.
The NPA had since closed down some 21 of such stations.
Also, the President directed the cessation of all construction of LPG stations in the country and the implementation of the Cylinder Re-circulation Module of LPG distribution. The module, according to the NPA, will ensure LPG filling points are sited out of densely populated areas and commercial centres.
This, however, did not go down well with the LPG Marketers Association and the Gas Tanker Drivers who complained that the move will take them out of business.
And in a move to safeguard their “business integrity” in the wake of the closure of their facilities, the LPG Marketers Association suspended the sale of LPG products nationwide to carry internal safety audit of their facilities to avoid them being shut down by the NPA.
“…The more the NPA closes our outlets down, it affects the integrity of our business. So we need to make sure that the Ghanaian confidence in our business is so high and it won’t be as if that, because the NPA is closing us down it means that in terms of adhering to safety regulations we were not doing that,” Bernard Owiredu of the LPG Marketing Companies Association told host of Morning Starr Francis Abban.
Speaking on the development on the same show, the Executive Director of COPEC, Duncan Amoah said, “They [LPG Marketing Companies Association] have not been treated fairly. We do not think that their issues have equally been treated fairly. We have seen about four/five gas explosion for the past two/three years [and] if you have almost one thousand outlets across the country and there’s going to be challenges with about five, ten or even fifty, the better options would have been to find what these challenges really are, what ways or measures do you put in place to forestall some of these accidents or explosions occurring in the first place.
“If you look at the cabinet resolution that came out recently it suggests that all of them will be kicked out of business one year from now with the introduction of the re-circulation module and that for some of us, it didn’t sound too well.”
Source: Ghana/Starrfmonline.com/103.5FM
