Erratic availability of fuel, especially diesel has crippled service delivery among government ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) with some forced to scale down or suspend lifesaving operations.
The Nation spot-checks have established that some district health offices (DHOs) are struggling to get fuel to keep ambulances on the road to serve referrals from out-stations. On the other hand, the Department of Disaster Management Affairs (Dodma) said its relief food distribution to people in need of food was also disrupted while the Electricity Generation Company (Egenco) said power supply to Likoma and Chizumulu, which is propelled by diesel generators, was becoming a challenge.
In Machinga, at the peak of the diesel shortage last week, some patients in critical condition were left languishing in health centres as ambulances had no fuel to ferry them to the district hospital while in Blantyre, the DHO was forced to scale down operations by almost 50 percent due to fuel challenges.
However, the checks established that the situation in other district hospitals such as Chikwawa, Nsanje and Nkhata Bay was different because they reported to have fuel reservoirs and special arrangements with filling stations that did not affect the operations.
In an interview on Thursday, Machinga District director of health and social services Jones Chise said fuel shortage, particularly diesel, has crippled health service delivery in the district.
“This fuel crisis has not spared us because we have had situations where ambulances had no fuel to ferry patients from health centres to the district hospital, but the situation has now improved,” he said.
Speaking in a separate interview, Dodma commissioner Charles Kalemba revealed that all vehicles carrying relief items to be distributed nationwide were grounded due to shortage of diesel.
He said all the relief items move from Lilongwe, but cannot reach out to the people who have been affected by disasters.
Said Kalemba: “As one of the transporting institutions has equally been affected by shortage of fuel because we don’t have any special arrangements.
“Trucks are already loaded with relief items, but they have no fuel. It means all the districts where we wanted to distribute have been affected.”
On his part, Dedza district commissioner Thomas Chigwenembe said the fuel shortage also affected relocation of Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) voters’ registration equipment.
He said some of the equipment was stuck for about two days after the closure of the first phase of voters’ registration exercise.
Meanwhile, Egenco has asked Malawi Energy Regulatory Authority (Mera) and National Oil Company of Malawi (Nocma) for a special consideration of fuel supply to avert a possible shutdown of the company’s diesel power plants.
Egenco public relations officer Mervin Mchenga expressed optimism in a written response that the generation company will be considered, failing which, operations of their diesel power plants “will be greatly affected”.
Overall, the company’s generation capacity from diesel generators installed in Blantyre, Lilongwe, Mzuzu and Likoma and Chizumulu islands is 53.2 megawatts (MW).
Egenco said in a statement that it requires a minimum of 10 000 litres of diesel every two weeks for normal operations at both Islands but indicated that due to fuel shortages,it has been able to secure only 4 000 litres.
In a separate interview on Wednesday, Nocma deputy chief executive officer Micklas Reuben said fuel was being loaded at Nacala Port in Mozambique but could not state when exactly it would arrive in the country, citing uncertainties of logistics.
Asked when exactly Malawians should expect the fuel situation normalise in the country, Mera consumer affairs and public relations manager Fitina Khonje was noncommittal, saying the authority “will provide update at an opportune time”.
Malawi Confederation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry chief executive officer Daisy Kambalame is on record having said the business community was concerned about the state of supply of fuel and there was need for joint efforts to identify sustainable supply.
On the other hand, Economics Association of Malawi acting president Bertha Bangara Chikadza urged the government to move beyond relying on development partners for foreign exchange and start planning for situations like these.
Diesel supply has since improved, but queues, mostly shorter than before, are being seen at service stations.
Malawi has been experiencing fuel stockouts in the past four years, largely due to foreign exchange scarcity. The country has an annual import bill of $3 billion against $1 billion forex it generates.
