Chronicle Editor
THE Government moved fast last week to quash social media rumours of impending fuel shortages in the country. The social media message advised people to stock up supplies to avoid inconvenience. The silly rumour quickly circulated, as lies invariably do. Many people took the canard seriously. Perhaps just as many dismissed it with the contempt it deserved.No doubt the whole thing was manufactured to cause panic ahead of the launch of the bond notes today, and also to prefigure a major fuel crisis during the festive season.
We are slowly growing used to this dark side of the social media in Zimbabwe, something that is causing a major backlash across the globe.
Governments are getting wary of and irritated by social media abuse and its potential to cause political upheaval and national instability, especially in these days of terror attacks. Western powers like France, Britain and the United States are formulating stricter laws to fight what is seen as cyber-terror targeting establishments. Zimbabwe is following in their footsteps in coming sup with a Bill on cyber security.
In dismissing the rumoured fuel shortages, Secretary for Energy and Power Development Partson Mbiriri said the country had enough fuel stocks to last until next year. There was therefore no reason for the nation to panic.
We have no reason to question Mr Mbiriri’s assurances, save to say there were instances last week when, for whatever reasons, a number of filling stations in Harare and Chegutu claimed not to have fuel.
They claimed their suppliers were demanding cash rather than electronic money transfers. They used that excuse to demand hard cash payments for fuel from the motoring public, accompanied by assertions of a discount for cash purchases.
On the other hand, we found Mr Mbiriri’s latest assurances, just as in the previous instance, both disingenuous and inadequate.
He told the nation that last month Zimbabwe had imported 134 742 963 litres of fuel. We don’t know what that figure translates to in US dollar terms. But what it does tell us is that Zimbabwe is spending a lot of scarce foreign currency importing fuel.
More importantly, for an economy the same social media and its private media cousins tell us daily that it’s either dead or dying, that import figure is staggering. In that regard, Mr Mbiriri’s assurances should come with a much needed caveat; we haven’t discovered a fuel well within Zimbabwe’s borders so motorists should use the commodity sparingly.
This should be standard now, nothing to be coy about. Local authorities do it every time regarding water usage, something we don’t import. Zimbabwe’s vehicle population is growing almost in inverse proportion to dwindling financial resources.
There is therefore need to conserve fuel. People should get this message more frequently than to panic when overnight we fail to pay for the “bonded” fuel and we wake up to dry filling stations.
The message from the ministry should be one which induces motorists to be partners in saving fuel rather than appear to encourage reckless abuse. It’s a show of strength than weakness or lack of capacity to meet necessary fuel requirements.
Let us avoid giving these discredited social media saboteurs the chance to say “we warned you and we were right” when a glitch occurs in future in the fuel supply chain.
Online Reporter