DPR impound fabricated fuel tanks in Gombe

As the fuel scarcity in the country remained unabated, Gombe State office of the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) Monday impounded five vehicles at a petrol filling station in Gombe which was prefabricated for fraudulent acquisition of the product in large quantity with the aim of taking it to be sold at the black-market.

The Operations Controller of the DPR in Gombe, Abdullahi Abawa disclosed to Journalists in Gombe during a routine surveillance of the Department at one of the filling stations.

He said the Department will continue to do everything humanly possible to protect the innocent members of the general public from Shylock people who have deviced dubious means of buying fuel in large quantities and reselling same to the public at a very high cost.

According to him the men of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps will now be drafted to deal with the perpetrators of what he described as economic sabotage according to the stipulations of the laws.

Our Correspondent learnt that for about three months now, residents of Gombe State have been trying to come to terms with the long queues at petrol filling stations and scarcity, which the Department of Petroleum Resources is attributing to an insufficient level of supplies for the state.

Abdullahi Abawa said that since December last year, the state has been getting only 415,800 litres per week, which translate to about 15 trucks of 40,000 litres per day while the weekly sufficiency requirement for Gombe State is 4,158,000 litres.

The Operations  Controller also said that the department has been trying its best to ensure that the fuel supplied gets to the end users, but that markers and some fraudulent elements have devised fraudulent means of acquiring the product and reselling it at a high price.

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He then urged National Petroleum Corporation to increase the supply of the product, so as to avoid fraudulent activities that go on at various filling stations during the scarcity.

He said the scarcity of the product was encouraging and increasing activities by the public and the filling stations, thereby causing untold hardship to the public.

Abdullahi Abawa, however, refuted allegations of bribery among the staff of the Department by some owners of filling stations as false, saying the staff of the Department were well paid and cannot stoop so low as to collect stipends.