CPC hot lines to look into public complaints

Dharma Sri Abeyratne

Petroleum Industries Minister Susil Premajayantha requests the general public to inform the Sales Division of the Petroleum Industries Ministry if their vehicles stalled and suffered any sudden engine failures as a result of the quality of petrol.

People can register their complaints over the telephone to the sales division on 011-5664941, 011-5665082. The Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (Ceypetco) will inquire into the complaints with immediate effect, the minister added. Meanwhile, Ceypetco Chairman Harry Jayawardena in a statement regarding demur petrol pointed out that Ceypetco supplies the bulk of the nation’s petroleum requirements while supplying the fuel requirements of the power plants as well.

The refinery produces around 50 percent of the petroleum products sold to the market by Ceypetco. He further pointed out that, proper quality tests are carried out when petroleum products are imported.

Accordingly, after carrying out quality tests, a cargo of Gasoline was imported along with Gas Oil Volume. The cargo reached Colombo on June 16. The cargo quality tests in Colombo confirmed the imported Gasoline and Gas Oil specifications and hence immediately arranged to discharge the cargo to shore tanks to avert any shortage.

The statement further points out that, Ceypetco guarantees supplying of quality products to the nation and this Gasoline cargo has met with all the basic parameters of quality as ascertained by independent cargo inspectors appointed at both load port and discharge port. Ceypetco emphasized the fact that on several occasions has rejected cargo with wrong specifications and had penalized the suppliers for their irresponsible behaviour. Ceypetco is making arrangements to test the samples to analyze the cause of such incidents of cargo contamination prior to delivery to the consumers.

According to statistics, there are over 2.1 million motorcycles, 539,000 three-wheelers and 410,000 motor cars in the country. But Ceypetco said that the complaints received by it is very insignificant to the total vehicle number and they were mainly from motorcycle and three-wheeler owners.

The cargo has been distributed among 1,000 filling stations across the country and the complaints came from a very few filling stations.

Therefore, these complaints could not be attributed to the quality of petrol imported by Ceypetco.