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FG saves N26bn from bridging claims

By on January 21, 2014

The Federal Government, through its Petroleum Equalisation Fund, saved a total of N26bn in 2013 after it stopped the illegal payment of bridging claims to fraudulent petroleum marketers.

PEF is an agency under the Federal Ministry of Petroleum Resources responsible for the payment of bridging claims to petroleum marketers transporting products from one location to another.

The Executive Secretary of the fund, Mrs. Sharon Kasali, said the government was able to save the “huge amount” after it successfully deployed an automated technology known as ‘Aquila’ to curb the alleged fraudulent excesses perpetrated by some petroleum marketers.

Kasali said during an interview with journalists in Abuja that the technology was developed to also address the numerous complaints of the marketers.

She said, “The comparative figure on the benefits of ‘Aquila’ from January to December 2012 when we were running it manually and from January to December 2013 when the manual process was stopped showed a reduction of about N26bn.”

She observed that the project had, from its inauguration in 2012, covered about 61 out of the 71 petroleum depots in the country.

She stated that 30,000 tanker trucks had been issued with tags to operate under the project, stressing that the automated tags had “tremendously helped to reduce illegal claims by unscrupulous petroleum suppliers.”

Kasali admitted that some employees of PEF must have collaborated with the marketers to defraud the Federal Government before the advent of ‘Aquila,’ but explained that the fund had disengaged most of those that were found culpable.

She said, “It was in June last year that we disengaged those people that were in the field. From that June last year, it became very difficult for them to carry out such fraud. In fact, we have been able to block all forms of loopholes in the system with this technology.

“However, my guess is that the loophole was probably between March and June last year. It wasn’t that much. It was a very short period and you can see the tremendous amount of savings that we made between January and December 2013.”

She  said the fund, through ‘Aquila,’ would phase out and disable all former processes and tags used in tagging tanker trucks.

She described the new project as an improved device with proven security and monitoring features, adding that PEF was partnering with the Federal Road Safety Corps to further reduce fraud in the system.

She explained that the project would ensure that the processing of claims by petroleum marketers had minimal human interventions in order to reduce errors.

 

 

[Punch]