Fuel quota system: Tread cautiously
Tuesday 1st August, 2023
The QR code-based rationing mechanism introduced one year ago has helped halve the national fuel consumption, the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) has said, according to media reports. In fact, it helped bring order out of chaos and thereby saved current dispensation.
Ideally, fuel should be available sans any restrictions, but the country had to ration it for want of foreign currency. Last year’s political upheavals which further weakened the economy could have been averted if the fuel quota system had been introduced much earlier. The Gotabaya Rajapaksa government, in its wisdom, chose to ignore calls for rationing fuel.
Hoarding led to an exponential increase in the demand for fuel, which was in short supply, and the introduction of the quota system helped keep hoarders at bay, distribute fuel efficiently, and curtail the demand for fuel significantly. The government has increased the fuel quota twice during the past several months. Now, Minister of Power and Energy Kanchana Wijesekera says the fuel rationing system will be done away with, in two months or so.
Going by the CPC’s aforesaid claim, one wonders whether the government is being imprudent because the scrapping of the quota system is likely to lead to an increase in the demand for fuel. However, what the CPC has left unsaid is that besides the fuel quota system, unprecedented price hikes were also responsible for a drastic drop in the national fuel consumption.
Maybe the government is convinced that even if the fuel quota system is abolished, the demand for fuel will not increase owing to high prices; otherwise, it would never have opted to increase the fuel quota. Or, it expects the entry of foreign companies into the fuel retail business to obviate the need for fuel rationing. But it had better tread cautiously lest fuel distribution should be plunged into chaos once again with long lines of vehicles forming around filling stations. Lessons learnt during crises are forgotten soon afterwards.
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Witch-hunt against whistleblowers
Health Minister Keheliya Rambukwella always tries to defend the indefensible. He has, in a television interview, over the weekend, said ‘misleading statements’ being made about sensitive issues in the health sector prompted the Ministry of Health to issue a circular, in keeping with the Establishment Code, restricting health professionals’ freedom to speak to the media.
The Health Ministry reeks of corruption, which causes staggering losses to the state coffers and endangers the lives of patients owing to the use of substandard drugs in government hospitals. Trade unions deserve praise for exposing corrupt deals that politicians and officials cut with pharmaceutical companies, etc. Instead of conducting investigations and catching the crooks who are thriving at the expense of the sick, the Health Ministry has launched a witch-hunt against whistleblowers!
It is hoped that the circular at issue will not deter health professionals from exposing crooked deals. The crooks in the garb of politicians and bureaucrats responsible for having ruined the health sector for personal gain must be brought to account. They have caused a severe erosion of public trust in the state-run health institutions.
All trade unions and civil society organisations ought to circle the wagons and do their utmost to defeat the government’s efforts to silence whistleblowers and thereby protect the crooks who are shamelessly amassing ill-gotten wealth. It is incumbent upon them to ensure that the government crooks, who are trying to take cover behind the Establishment Code, are exposed and dealt with according to the Penal Code.
