Down and out (of fuel) in Chimoio & Quelimane / With only one gas station open yesterday – Mozambique

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Down and out (of fuel) in Chimoio & Quelimane / With only one gas station open yesterday – Mozambique

12:18 CAT | 02 Feb 2017

O País / Chimoio, yesterday morning

While the cities of Maputo and Matola sigh with relief, Chimoio continued to face fuel shortages, at least until noon yesterday. Only one of the seven filling stations in the Manica capital had supplies of fuel, resulting in long lines of cars waiting hours to refill. Visibly desperate, some motorists say that if fuel shortages prevail, they will be forced to park up their cars.

Sheimin Vieira had to wait two hours to refuel the car and have a five-liter drum filled. “I have another car that ran out of fuel, so I took the tank to fill,” he said. In the same queue was Paula Nhantumbo, who said that her car was already driving on the reserve tank. “If I can’t fillup today, tomorrow I might not be able to get the car moving,” she said.

In addition to the queues, the situation is already beginning to affect the movement of people and goods. Tomás João is a conductor on the Chimoio-Quelimane bus route. He says that the bus he works on had to use fuel in an electricity generator belonging to its owner to get to Quelimane, capital of Zambézia province.

In the center of the country, Quelimane also spent the day without fuel yesterday. Only one station was supplying fuel, leading to long queues of vehicles.

In the interview he gave to [this newspaper] on Monday, National Director of Hydrocarbons and Fuels Moisés Paulino said that the fuel supplier in Beira had enough stock to supply the entire central area of the country. Paulino however acknowledged that there were “some difficulties in supply”, but he assured the public that the supplier would be able to solve the problem.

On the occasion, Paulino said that another tanker ship was on its way to Beira to boost fuel stocks. Nevertheless, the two central cities of Chimoio and Quelimane continue to experience fuel shortages and were both dependent yesterday on a single station to supply thousands of vehicles. The lack of fuel prevails in some cities in the centre of the country, and shows signs of worsening.

Source: O País