From Paul Osuyi, Asaba
Delta State Government on Tuesday said it will continue engage critical stakeholders in the marketing and distribution of petrol with a view to ensuring that citizens are unduly ripped off their hard earned money.
Chairman of the state petroleum products monitoring committee, Emman Amgbaduba gave the assurance in Asaba while addressing newsmen.
Amgbaduba said the queues in petrol stations across the were gradually diminishing, and urged residents and motorists to patronise stations with considerable prices to force others to bring down their arbitrary high prices.
According to him, the State Government was concerned about scarcity of fuel and other issues affecting livelihood of the people across the state.
“Since our taskforce was put in place and we have gone round the state, we discovered that petrol is becoming more available to our citizens though the queues are still there, but easing out gradually and the price per litre is also coming down, he said.
“Although, some people are still selling at N400 and above per litre, the prices are still coming down and I can inform you that we were represented this morning by a member of our committee IPMAN, at a meeting with the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission.
“At that meeting, IPMAN and NUPSRC agreed that because of the cost with which they bought the products to the various petrol stations initially so long they can prove they bought the products at that rate, those selling within Warri and environs should sell at N220 per litre and those selling within Asaba axis should sell for N230 per litre until they exhaust that stock.
“It is our hope that as time goes on the prices will come down further with the availability of more products and the apology of the NNPC Limited and with the promise of NNPC to bring in more petrol, am sure that the prices will keep coming down.
“I want to crave the indulgence of our citizens in Delta to continue to be patient and patronise petrol stations selling at the very lowest rates, that way it will drive others to bring down their prices when no one patronised them.
“As a government we will continue engage them to ensure that our citizens are not ripped off their hard earned monies,” he said.