ill-thought-out minister
Ground realities ignored
Failed fuel distribution schemes
Gotabaya Rajapaksa was thrown out by the entire country. The reason is, in strugglers words,’ Gota failed’. A country has no use of failed leaders. But not all failed leaders driven out in this manner. Although some leaders fail daily, they continue to keep their parliamentary seats actve at the same time by providing jokes to the people.
Minister of Power and Energy, is a ministry that is most important to its citizens and has a decisive impact on the survival of the country. The minister whom this is assigned had demonstrated more than once how much he has become a failure. This failed minister who is playing the jokers role to the country in day to day basis. He is none other than Kanchana Wijesekara.
As the Minister Kanchana Wijesekera is the minister in charge of Petroleum importation and distribution in Sri Lanka. Therefore, Kanchana Wijesekara is in the fore front among the people who get blamed for lack of fuel supplies in Sri Lanka these days. In a country where people spend five or six days in queues without finding a single drop of fuel, it is no wonder that the minister in charge of petroleum is getting blamed for it .
But looking back to three weeks down the line one would understand that minister is blamed not mainly for the fuel shortage, but energy minister getting so much of blame because of the ‘lies’ he comes out most often.
Sri Lanka’s former Energy Minister was Udaya Gammanpilaya. He is totally different person from the current energy minister. He often says about his impossibility of supplying fuel . The chiefs of Pohottuwa blamed him for panicking the public by announcing that the oil was only available for a limited number of days. This is the reason why he finally lost his ministerial position.
He always opined that there was no oil. But present minister is completely different from him. Although there is no oil in the country, he often said that there is oil. Or that an oil tanker is arriving in a day or two. These statements of his drew more and more people to fuel queues , but only to see there were no drop of fuel.
Sri Lanka’s oil reserves were depleted to zero last month. Oil distribution began but to be restricted on June 13 . Simultaneously, the minister stated that the next oil tanker would arrive on the 15th. The minister then stated that due to rough seas, the ship would arrive on the 17th and then on the 19th. While the country awaited the arrival of the oil ship, the Petroleum Corporation ceased selling oil to consumers on or around the 19th. As a result, Sri Lanka became the world’s first country to prohibit the sale of fuel to consumers.
The IOC. recorded an unpredicted sale because the petroleum corporation stopped selling oil. A large crowd gathered at the IOC filling stations.
The minister then stated that because the next fuel ship is scheduled to arrive on the 21st, ‘please do not queue up’ at Ceypetco filling stations’. Customers were seen queuing on the 20th to get fuel from the ship which was to arrive on the 21st. However, no fuel tanker arrived on the 21st. Minister Kanchana Wijesekera, who apologized to the public for this in Twitter message, and flew to Qatar in search of oil on the 23rd.
Despite being a Gulf state, Qatar is best known for its gas. It is common knowledge, not only to him but to the entire government, that the energy minister of a country facing a severe gas shortage would forego gas and travel to Qatar to request oil. However, Minister Kanchana and others who travelled to Qatar in search of oil returned empty-handed. The minister arrived, but the oil tankers did not!.
Distribution of fuel
As a result, the country’s oil queues grew longer and longer. Former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe stated in Parliament that the oil would arrive on the 29th of the month. That is to say, gasoline will not be available in Sri Lanka until July 22nd . The Minister of Energy stopped predicting the arrival of ships after that statement, but he continued to disrupt the distribution of available fuel
Minister Kanchana first requested that the police control the oil queues. The army then joined in. As a result, oil lines across the country resembled war zones. Despite requests to establish a system to provide fuel to essential services, including health, the Minister did not listen. Finally, due to a lack of fuel, several hospitals in the Anuradhapura district were forced to close down . People had to queue for oil for six or seven days.
Due to rising tensions, arguments were common in oil queues. As a result, in addition to people were dying in fuel lines, reports surfaced of people being hacked to death as well.
Following that, the failed oil minister decided to distribute oil. Fuel distribution should be done under formal supervision, if sufficient oil could not be brought in and oil queues were dispersed. Instead of properly preparing for such an event, Minister Kanchana Wijesekera introduced oil distribution formulas and methods. Even today, fuel is only delivered to the vehicle’s fuel tanks.
However, many people’s cars are still on queues. Some steal fuel from vehicles and wait in fuel lines. The fuel Minister then launch an app to help people find gas stations. The minister, however, releases the app into the wild after two or three weeks of ineffective operation. Then followed a method of distributing fuel based on the last two digits of the vehicle licensed plate.
It also failed in the same time, causing numerous issues. After both methods of fuel distribution introduced have failed in some way or other , the energy minister played his third trump card, by introducing a fuel token system. Army officials distributed tokens to people who have been waiting in line for three to four days. Despite army officers handing out tokens while experiencing various hardships on the road, no diesel or gasoline arrived in the country.
As a result, the fuel token became just a number. People who waited in line for a weeks continuously had to go home empty-handed only with a token. Kanchana Wijesekera’s token system was cancelled last week, and the next day a new fuel distribution system was introduced.
New distribution system.
Each fuel buyer will be assigned a fixed fuel quota based on the type of vehicle used under the new system. By registering online, one can obtain the quota as well as the QR code required to obtain it. This QR code can be used to get fuel at the gas station as a photo on a mobile phone, or by printing or presenting it to the gas station.
Although it appears to be successful at first glance, the QR code system has a number of flaws as well. Anyone who uses the internet to obtain the QR code must provide some information. One of them is the chassis number of the vehicle. This is compared to the identification number of the owner. This is accomplished in collaboration with the Motor Transport Department. Several issues arose here. The first is about old automobiles. Vehicles with no chassis numbers were still used very rarely today.
Another issue is that the motor vehicle department is unable to confirm the chassis numbers of water motors, generators, and so on. Another issue is that fuel consumers who do not have an e-mail address or a smart phone will suffer greatly under this system.
Especially for those who work in open fields like farmers and fishermen, getting fuel according to the QR code system is a matter of inconvenience.
The number of the fisherman’s boat is not known to the motor vehicle department.
The farmer’s water pump is also in the same condition. According to the Ministry of Energy, all that is required is to show the pumper at the filling station the QR code on your mobile phone. However, if anyone has been to a petrol station in any country in the world for even for one day, they will have noticed a sign posted near the fuel pump stating two things that should not be done at those petrol stations. Smoking and using mobile phones are both prohibited. Because of the many risks that can trigger disaster by use of the mobile phone., Using it in an area where there is petrol vapor is the same as spraying yourself with a petrol bomb.
The owners of filling stations came forward and resisted the activation of mobile phones in near the fuel pump as it is universally not an approved practice due to the danger surround it. it is very strange realizing the the danger hidden in this proposal that the government did not see. Petrol stations and their employees are in grave danger as a result of this distribution system which that allows mobile phones to be brought close to fuel pumps, which is illegal.
However, in response to the government’s short-sighted proposal, insurance companies said they would cancel the insurance certificates given to the filling stations, Government piloted several filling stations in the Colombo district on the 21st, 23rd, and 24th, using the QR code and until further notice to postpone the fuel distribution that was scheduled to begin on the 21st. The government has decided to turn it into a piolet project.
Aruna Laxman Fernando