Fuel transporters talk tough on levies
By BENNIE MUNDANDO SOME councils are reportedly cashing in through Levies slapped on Fuel transporters.
Petroleum Transporters Association of Zambia (PTAZ) Secretary General Benson Tembo, has warned that the association would have no option but to halt supplies to districts where councils have started demanding transport levies from tanker drivers.
“We are already heavily taxed and cannot afford incurring any more unnecessary additional costs,
They are doing this simply because the think those in the sector were making a fortune without realising that the sector was regulated to maintain uniform fuel prices across the country,” complained Mr. Tembo.
He named Mufulira and Chililabombwe as the districts which were allegedly levying tankers adding that a recent meeting among members resolved that tanker drivers should avoid such routes if the trend continued.
He said his association had tried to reason with relevant authorities but that nothing tangible had come out of these engagements.
“If these councils want to col- lect the levies, they must get such from other road users and not us because we are a regulated sector. We expected the Ministry of Local Government to deal with this issue once and for all but nothing has come up.
“We had a meeting as petroleum transporters and we resolved that if these councils continue forcing us to pay, we will have no option but to stop traversing these districts and no one should blame us when they run out of fuel. No tanker will be delivering fuel in such districts and we shall do this without any further warning,” Mr. Tembo said.
He said petroleum transporters were incurring a lot of costs from registering their vehicles up to the point of doing their transactions and will not entertain prohibitive and frivolous additional levies as they were also in business to grow.
“When you bring a tanker in the country, you have to register it with RTSA and you have to subject the truck to ZABS where you have to pay before assigning it to the Zambia Weights and Measures Agency where we are paying K10, 000 per tanker. After doing that, you have to get back to RTSA for a road service licence because without it, you cannot get an ERB licence and all these are costs.