Inspectors check filling stations in Maputo, fines can go up to US$9,000

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Inspectors check filling stations in Maputo, fines can go up to US$9,000

6:12 CAT | 28 Mar 2017

File photo

Mozambique’s National Norms and Quality Institute (INNOQ) has again confirmed that petrol pumps in some Maputo filling stations are providing less fuel than motorists have paid for.

An INNOQ team carried out an extraordinary inspection on Tuesday morning of a filling station near Maputo airport owned by the Portuguese company Galp.

Bernardo Mussagy, head of the INNOQ Legal Measurement Department, told reporters that the pumps at this station bear labels showing that they were inspected last year. Yet they still have the same problem of providing less fuel than the pump meter declared, and which the client has paid for.

He admitted that all measurements are subject to mistake. In the case of fuel, the acceptable margin of error is 100 millilitres in every 20 litres. “What we do not want are any premeditated mistakes, which always give the client less than he paid for”, said Mussagy. “INNOQ’s goal is to eliminate the trend to always give less to the consumer”.

When a pump systematically provides less fuel than it should, INNOQ bans it from serving any more motorists until the anomaly has been corrected. At this Galp service station, there were a total of 16 pumps providing petrol and diesel. The inspectors put a ban on two of them which, although they had been inspected before, were still pumping amounts that were less than the acceptable margin of error.

If inaccurate petrol pumps are not corrected, but continue to swindle motorists, INNOQ can impose fines of up to 600,000 meticais (about 9,000 US dollars).

The management of the petrol station claimed that all equipment in Galp filling stations is maintained regularly, and anomalies are corrected.

INNOQ also checked containers of cooking gas, and found that several did not contain the regulation amount. However, this is unlikely to be a deliberate fraud, since the inspectors found some containers with too much gas, as well as those that held too little.

Source: AIM