The Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP) has proposed a technical audit of all petroleum products service stations following the multiple explosions at a gas station near Atomic Junction in Madina.
In a statement, the Centre said such measures would be “important to ensure that another explosion is not in the loom.”
[contextly_sidebar id=”CbiTg5I4fhWVrwiopmEZF0VRANvtpnzC”]ACEP also advised that the technical audit be conducted by an independent body “to ensure that those found not to be compliant with safety standards are closed, and their further existence carefully assessed.”
“Product stations that fail to comply with safety standards must be made to compensate all affected persons and have their licenses revoked to incentivize compliance within the industry,” ACEP suggested.
The aftermath of explosions like the one at Atomic Junction, is followed by an outpouring of grief and a string of assurances from the government.
“It is about time we take a second look at the siting of gas stations in our country, and ensure the strict enforcement of, and adherence to safety regulations, so as to forestall the occurrence of any more of such avoidable incidents,” President Nana Akufo-Addo said in December 2016 after the last major gas explosion at Labadi.
His government is again assuring of policy decisions to end similar gas explosions once and for all, by enforcing safety regulations after the Atomic explosion that has claimed seven lives so far, and injured 132 others.
‘No more business-as-usual’
But ACEP has stressed that it wants to see a shift from the government’s “business-as-usual responses to a comprehensive action that deals with a system that enables the unfortunate to continue to occur.”
It attributed these massive accidents to the “failure of institutions who have the mandate to check, monitor, and sanction the distribution of petroleum products in the downstream sector…”
Thus efforts to solve these failings can be reached “by commissioning an independent examination of the regulatory regime for an objective solution thereto,” the Centre noted.
Beyond this, stiffer sanctions have to be slapped on the owners of petroleum products stations who violate safety standards.
“The sanctions must include possible incarceration of the owners of the service stations if negligence can be attributed to them,” ACEP said.
ACEP’s full statement can be viewed here
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By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana