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To: IndioBlues who wrote (46662)	6/18/1999 5:15:00 PM
From: ldo79	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 95453

The "glut" of oil in Africa - or lack thereof. Xinhua via NewsEdge Corporation : LUSAKA (June 17) XINHUA - The diesel shortage which has persistently hit Zambian capital Lusaka continued Thursday with nearly all the service stations in the city operating without oil. The persistent fuel shortage has temporarily crippled operations at the University Teaching Hospital, the biggest hospital in the southern African country, police and many other government departments. At the hospital mortuary, an attendant said that few vehicles had gone to collect corpses, causing congestion in the refrigerators. "Corpses are currently being piled on top of each other since people just come with excuses that there is no transport to pick their relatives due to the fuel shortage," said the attendant. A check at the police main filling point found out that all the diesel tanks try with only a few liters of premium. Police spokesman, Alex Chilufya, described the prevailing situation as chaotic and called for a quick solution to the problem. He said only urgent cases will be attended to due to the limited resources available. Meanwhile, the government has been advised to involve all the oil marketing companies in the importation of refined products to ease the fuel blues in the country. Meanwhile, Vice-President of Zambia Association of Chambers of Commerce and Industry (ZACCI), Boniface Chiweza, has called on the government to allow all oil marketing companies to bring in the fuel. "Our economy has been liberalized and the government should therefore allow individual oil marketing companies to import the fuel rather than have it brought in through the Zambia National Oil Company," he said. The association was worried about the fuel shortage because it had come at a time when transporters were supposed to be ferrying this season's maize harvest from the areas of production. Chairman of the Truckers Association of Zambia, Charles Madondo said that the one million liters of fuel recently imported by the government was only about a day's consumption as long distance truckers required as much as 1,500 liters on a single trip. He said oil marketing companies should share the contract instead of awarding the tender to only one company as government initially did early this week. [Copyright 1999, Comtex