Dr. Mustapha Abdul-Hamid addressing journalists in Tamale

The National Petroleum Authority (NPA) Chief Executive, Dr. Mustapha Abdul-Hamid, has paid a working visit to the Northern region. The purpose of his visit was to familiarize himself with the facilities, installations, and offices under the National Petroleum Authority(NPA).

The NPA CEO also visited the Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation Company (BOST)depot at Buipe in the Savannah region. He called on the Northern Regional Police Commander, COP Timothy Yoosa Bonga to collaborate with the authority to ensure that people obey the laws of the petroleum authority. The Director of Policy Coordination at the National Petroleum Authority(NPA), Jacob Amuah revealed that the authority has been compelled to install tracking systems on fuel trucks to tackle misuse of the fund in the transportation of petroleum products.

According to him, the fund used in equalizing petroleum products pricing has been abused, so they had to find a way of checking where tankers offload fuel products so they do not claim what is not due to them. “ Somebody can buy from Tema and claim they are sending it to the North which might not be true and so because we do not have the visibility we decided to install the tracking systems which allows us to see where each tanker carrying petroleum products arrived at and where it discharged the products because this has an impact on the cost that we pay to the transporters of the products so we have installed these trackers on the trucks that help us to monitor where the trucks took the products from and where they offload so that at the end of the day we can pay the accurate price to the transporters.”

So far, the NPA CEO and senior management members of the authority have visited Upper East, Upper West, Northern, Bono, Ashanti Regions, and the Upper West region as part of his familiarization tour of the regions.