RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

As cit­i­zens get ready for next week’s hike in fu­el prices, pres­i­dent of the Pe­tro­le­um Deal­ers’ Co­op­er­a­tive, Derek Joseph, has ad­vised that peo­ple should not at­tempt to store fu­el in their homes, as this pos­es a fire risk and a threat to chil­dren.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia on Wednes­day, Joseph said while some may think it will save them mon­ey if they store fu­el be­fore the price hike takes ef­fect, this kind of think­ing is fool­hardy and could re­sult in prob­lems.

“It is not ad­vis­able to stock fu­el. There is no rea­son to do that, es­pe­cial­ly for peo­ple who have chil­dren. You don’t want that around and a child drinks it in er­ror. Or you do not want it to be stored in such a way to cause a fire. One should not do that. How many gal­lons of fu­el you will stock up on? It doesn’t make sense and will not re­sult in any sav­ings,” he said.

He al­so called on peo­ple not to pan­ic-buy fu­el this week­end.

Joseph, who is al­so the ex­ec­u­tive pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer of the Pe­tro­le­um Deal­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion, said there is no con­tin­gency plan in place for the week­end, as they ex­pect­ed the usu­al lines that oc­cur­rbe­fore a gas hike.

“There is no prepa­ra­tion and every­thing re­mains the same but the price will be dif­fer­ent. Nor­mal­ly when there is a price in­crease, peo­ple will line up but it doesn’t make much of a dif­fer­ence. The fact is peo­ple will pay more for gas and it will cost the deal­er more to buy gas be­cause there is no shift in his mar­gin,” Joseph said.

He said he did not ex­pect any prob­lems as peo­ple al­ready had their favourite gas sta­tions and were al­ready pre­pared for the in­crease.

Joseph al­so urged peo­ple not to pan­ic-buy, say­ing, “Price in­creas­es are not con­fined to T&T alone, it is not some­thing that the gov­ern­ment has full con­trol over. Prices of every­thing in the world are in­creas­ing be­cause of dif­fer­ent things hap­pen­ing now in­clud­ing COVID and the war in Ukraine, the change in tech­nol­o­gy which has caused a shift in prices be­cause of this.”

Asked what could buffer the so­cial-eco­nom­ic fall­out, Joseph said peo­ple have to change their at­ti­tude to­wards work and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. 

“We have to un­der­stand that the types of busi­ness­es we op­er­ate must change. We must al­so change the mod­el of busi­ness we op­er­ate so we can func­tion in this chang­ing world,” he said.

He added, “We have lots of re­sources that are not un­used in the area of agri­cul­ture and agro-pro­cess­ing. We have to get back in­to that.”

Mean­while, re­tired Fire Sta­tion Of­fi­cer Kei­th See­baran took to Face­book to urge the pop­u­la­tion to re­frain from stock­pil­ing fu­el at home.

“The vapours are very flam­ma­ble and any ig­ni­tion source could ig­nite it, putting fam­i­ly and house at risk. Where will you store it? Un­der a step or in a room? This is dan­ger­ous. Why buy gas and put it down. It’s on­ly a dol­lar ex­tra per litre,” he added.

See­baran, who had 29 years of ex­pe­ri­ence in the Fire Ser­vice be­fore his re­tire­ment, said he got in­for­ma­tion that peo­ple in his com­mu­ni­ty were think­ing of stor­ing fu­el and he felt it was im­por­tant to strong­ly cau­tion the com­mu­ni­ty against do­ing this.

Fu­el prices are set to go up from next Tues­day, the same day that all stu­dents re­turn to phys­i­cal class­es. 

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