LIBERIA-TRANSPORT: Fuel Shortage Keeps Vehicles off the Streets

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Attes Johnson

MONROVIA, Jul 5 1996 (IPS) - Fighting has stopped in Liberia’s capital with the deployment there of peacekeepers, but the situation is far from normal with just a few vehicles on the road because of a serious shortage of fuel.

Eight months of peace had ended on Apr. 6 when the six-member interim ruling Council of State tried to arrest warlord Roosevelt Johnson on murder charges a month after he had been sacked as the rural development minister and leader of the ethnic Krahn wing of the United Liberation Movement (Ulimo-J).

This triggered an orgy of looting and the worst fighting since 1992 between Ulimo-J, Alhaji Kromah’s ethnic Mandingo Ulimo-K and Charles Taylor’s National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL).

The Ecowas Monitoring Group has since re-deployed troops in Monrovia and relative peace has returned here. But the government has not been able to tackle many of the problems arising from the fighting, including a fuel scarcity that has sent petroleum prices skyrocketing.

Just before the fighting began, Mobil Incorporated, the oldest importer of petroleum products here, had brought in enough fuel for six months.

But petroleum dealers’ stores and filling stations were looted when the company’s staff and security guards fled the fighting. Sources within the company hint Mobil may be seriously considering halting its operations until general elections originally scheduled for September are eventually held.

Before the renewal of hostilities, a gallon of petrol cost between 37.5 and 40 Liberian dollars and taxi and bus fares were as low as five dollars. Commercial transport operators were earning up to 500 Liberian dollars per taxi and 1,500 Liberian dollars per bus daily.

The Liberian dollar (LD) exchanges at 65 to the U.S. dollar.

Now, the price of fuel has shot up to 400 LD, the equivalent of two months’ salary for the average civil servant.

Taxi and bus drivers are demanding 40 and 35 LD respectively from passengers, with operators expecting taxi drivers to bring in 1,500 LD and bus drivers 2,000 LD per day, according to taxi driver Joseph Kollie.

“If you are short, the balance is deducted from your salary at the end of the month,” he said. This is despite the fact that taxi and bus drivers’ monthly salaries have stagnated at 800 and 1,000 LD respectively.

Most drivers are forced to accept this. As one of them told IPS: “It is difficult to find work nowadays. Our union is not effective at the moment due to the unending civil war.”

“The drivers get more in the field than the owners of the vehicles. What we give them is just an encouragement, they pay for themselves,” a taxi owner retorts.

Due to the increases in transport fares, some Liberians now rise as early as possible to walk to their destinations, while others have no option but to pay the new prices.

However, Commerce Minister Lusinee Kamara denies that there is a shortage of gasoline here.

“We have sent our personnel out into the field to monitor and reinforce the ministry’s mandate which states that a gallon of gasoline be sold at 40 (Liberian) dollars at every filling station in Monrovia. Anyone creating an artificial shortage will be fined accordingly,” says Kamara.

Yet gas continues to be sold on the streets by people, most of whom say they obtained the fuel from fighters who had stolen it.

“We sell for commission to be able to cater for our needs,” says Josiah Davis, who hopes to resume studying when his school re- opens. “On every gallon of gasoline, fuel oil and kerosene, there is a commission of 15 (Liberian) dollars. This is a lot of profit for someone who has lost all his belongings and has no home to go to.”

Those who have lost a lot of money because of the looting are incensed, and hold the government responsible.

The fuel shortage is a result of the “inability of the state authority to contain the recent hostilities in the city over populated with people who are the victims of war,” said an oil importer, who accuses those in power of robbing importers who only want to serve the public.

“If the Commerce Ministry is to regain the lost confidence and restore its credibility, some assurances need to be given to these victims to enjoy serving their fellow man,” she says.