Filling station sells petrol contaminated with water

A FUEL garage in Lupane is reportedly selling water contaminated petrol and a number of vehicles that were served at the filling station last week have been affected.

Three cars reportedly failed to start after topping fuel at the station, which is located at Lupane centre.

The motorists immediately engaged the garage petrol attendants who acknowledged the problem and drained the fuel from the cars, the Chronicle learnt.

The Chronicle was told that two of the affected motorists are Lupane residents while another is a policewoman based in Insuza.

There are fears that there could be more affected cars which may have refuelled and proceeded on their journeys as the filling station is one of the two located at Lupane centre.

One of the affected motorists reportedly left his vehicle at the garage after it failed to start because of the contaminated petrol.

Another motorist who preferred to remain anonymous said petrol attendants drained the fuel after his car also failed to start.

He said they later flashed out the fuel but the vehicle pump had already been damaged.

"I went to station where I bought fuel and upon leaving, my car showed warnings on the dashboard and could not start. I had driven for about 300 metres from the garage. I noticed they had sold me contaminated fuel and went back to make a complaint," said the motorist.

"They offered to drain the contaminated fuel and promised that the car would not be affected as they had drained another car with a similar problem. They flashed it out and the car is moving now but it releases thick white smoke from the exhaust. The pump was damaged and I suspect the injectors were damaged too which has affected combustion," he said.

The filling station' official declined to comment and referred Chronicle to the owner of the garage who he said was going to call back but had not done so yesterday.

The Zimbabwe Energy Regulatory Authority (Zera) has in the past warned fuel retailers not to tamper with quality of the product following concerns that the quality of fuel, particularly petrol was being blended beyond the stipulated ratio.

The gazetted blending ratio is 20 percent ethanol and this is done either at National Oil Infrastructure Company (NOIC) or any other blending sites.

Zera chief executive Mr Addington Mazambane yesterday encouraged motorists to quickly report all cases of tampering so that the authorities can investigate and institute corrective measures.

He said Zera will investigate.

"We encourage our stakeholders to quickly alert us when they have such a problem so that we immediately engage the retailer before many people are affected. Our Bulawayo team is going to investigate," he said.