By Cathy Maulidi:
At the rate fuel shortages are becoming frequent in the country, there is no sugarcoating the fact that the country is in a crisis of sorts.
Fuel shortage is a crisis of sorts because prices of other commodities fall and rise on the strength of the price of diesel and petrol.
Already, following never-ending fuel queues, community service providers have started hiking fares.
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Across the country, service users are now being made to cough more money as businesspersons have started engaging in “take-it-or-leave-it” sort of business, leaving people with no option but to play ball.
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At the heart of it all are decisions, or indecision, on what should really be the way forward on fuel prices.
With the government, through its official spokesperson, admitting that landing costs are higher than pump prices, one fails to understand why those in authority are failing to do the needful.
Somehow, we feel that the problem, which is premised on shortage of foreign exchange, is man-made.
It is man-made because our leaders do not seem to safeguard forex, as evidenced by their frequent trips abroad, where they claim to chalk deals—only for nothing to materialise on the ground.
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In the past six months alone, forex that would have served other purposes served the purpose of political expediency, as government officials and people that had no business being on foreign trips made it on the President’s list.
At the same time, the country has to source forex and use it to purchase Affordable Inputs Programme (AIP) materials. With rains around the corner, that is the plausible thing to do.
However, with the fuel problem requiring forex to be addressed, we do not see the government serving two masters [fuel and AIP fertiliser].One thing will definitely suffer.
As such, we are not elated by National Oil Company of Malawi (Nocma)’s assurance that two million litres of diesel have arrived in the country.
We are not even excited that an additional 3.5 million litres of petrol are expected to land at Nocma depots this week.
We know that these are temporary measures and that the problem will resurface soon.
As such, we would like to ask the government to see what it can pick from the Human Rights Defenders Coalition (HRDC) statement.
Unfortunately, HRDC does not seem to have sound ideas either, only asking the government to sideline middlemen in fuel procurement processes.
The truth is that what the country needs is a permanent solution to the fuel supply crisis. We have had enough of half measures.
