The Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG) Marketers Association has expressed its dissatisfaction with the National Petroleum Authority’s (NPA) plan to implement the Cylinder Re-circulation Model (CRM) in September 2021.
The association believes that the timeline is too short and that more public education is needed before the policy is fully rolled out.
The CRM is a new policy that aims to ensure that at least 50 percent of Ghanaians have access to safe, clean and environmentally friendly LPG by 2030.
The policy will require consumers to register with their Ghana Card details before they can buy gas at exchange points across the country.
Consumers will not have to own a cylinder, but will pick up pre-filled cylinders and pay only for the content.
However, the Vice President of the LPG Marketers Association, Gabriel Kumi, has argued that the policy will cause confusion among stakeholders and consumers if it is implemented in September.
NPA has set next month for the implementation, and so we have less than a month and the public confusion indicates that consumers are not ready and so there is a need to educate the public on the model so that we don’t confuse the public in the roll-out of the model,” he noted.
He said that the current system of LPG distribution is so entrenched that it cannot be changed abruptly without proper education and sensitisation.
“The current system is so entrenched that if you want to introduce a new system, you just don’t throw the old one out and suddenly introduce the new one, we have to do that slowly. Our initial discussion was that we should buy back all cylinders in the system because there are a lot of them out there that are obsolete and need to be changed, and it will be difficult to tell them to simply discard them and get new ones in anticipation of the model’s roll-out,” Kumi added.
In an interview with Citi FM, Kumi said that the association was not aware of the decision to use the Ghana Card as part of the CRM implementation until last week when the NPA had a press conference.
He said that the Ghana Card is not widely available and that many consumers may not have it by September.
“Not until last week that the NPA had a press conference, I did not know the Ghana Card was going to be used in the policy’s implementation. There is little education on this policy, and so we have to take our time to ensure the people understand the policy before it is implemented, and we can even give ourselves up until January 2024 to roll it out,” Kumi bemoaned.
He also said that the association had initially proposed that the NPA should buy back all cylinders in the system, as many of them are obsolete and need to be replaced.
He said that it would be difficult to tell consumers to discard their old cylinders and get new ones without adequate compensation.
Kumi suggested that the NPA should delay the implementation of the CRM until January 2024, and use the time to educate the public on the benefits and modalities of the policy.
He said that this would ensure a smooth transition and avoid any potential problems.
Source: The Independent Ghana | P.M.A Roberts