Traders fined for fuel price breach

Atotal of 13 fuel traders were fined on the spot for failing to reduce the price of fuel last Saturday.

24 were warned. This is out of the 248 fuel traders that were investigated throughout the four divisions.

And the Fiji Commerce Commission is coming out strong against those traders who fail to reduce the price of fuel as per the changes announced last week by Minister of Trade, Faiyaz Koya.

“Ignorance of the law is not a defence. Traders who have been engaged in selling these products should know how many times the prices change in a year,” said Fiji Commerce Commission chief executive officer Joel Abraham.

He said out of the 248 traders in the country that were inspected from Saturday until yesterday, 37 were found to have breached the last amendment of the prices.

In the Central Division, 92 were inspected and 13 were found in breach while in the Western Division, 19 out of the 100 that were inspected were in breach.

In the Northern Division, 5 out of 56 traders were found to be in breach.

For sole traders or a natural person, a maximum fine of $1,000 will be imposed if found in breach while $3,000 will be imposed on a breaching corporate body.

There are currently 20 inspectors from the Commission travelling around the country and inspecting rural and urban areas.

“For those that were found in breach, they were selling gas at the old price which is $37 and $1.95 for fuel.

“In some instances, traders who have not changed their prices would say that the gas company gave them the wrong price or that they were not aware of the change in price,” said Mr Abraham. Mr Abraham said the new price of gas was uploaded in their website at 10am on the 14th of July while the price of petrol was uploaded at 2.30pm on the same day. “No one should have an excuse of not being informed as the media had covered the price change announcement extensively and I do not think anybody should say it was not on our website,” he added.

Unethical practices will not be tolerated, Mr Abraham warned yesterday. Although he is not a believer of fines, Mr Abraham encouraged traders to be more ethical in their business attitudes.

“I am not a believer in imposing fines because if I keep on giving fines to somebody, for me that is not effective. I want them to change, we need to stop with that cat and mouse thing where they continue to be unethical and we have to chase them around. We want them to abide by the law and change their behaviour.

“It does not make any sense for them to do this. If people come to know that they are unethical, then it will be a negative effect on your business as well,” said Mr Abraham.