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Mugabe deploys soldiers at garages to enforce new fuel prices
ZimOnline
August 23, 2006

http://www.zimonline.co.za/headdetail.asp?ID=12723

HARARE - President Robert Mugabe's government has deployed soldiers and police at garages in Harare to enforce new controls on fuel prices, in a dramatic show of desperation by the embattled administration to put a lid on rising prices and inflation.

Soldiers and police - some of them wielding whips - could be seen on Tuesday, milling around at cash points at garages or in some cases helping manage queues of motorists but all the time keeping a close eye on fuel attendants to ensure they were charging the new prices decreed by the government last week.

The government last week ordered fuel dealers to slash the pump prices of petrol and diesel by almost 50 percent to between Z$320 and $335 per litre from the previous $620 to $680 per litre.

Some garage owners responded by holding on to their stock which has led to the re-emergence of long and winding queues at the few garages selling petrol and diesel. But garages that continued selling fuel were charging the old prices, resulting in the government sending out the army and police to enforce the new prices.

Police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena would not confirm or deny that police were monitoring prices at garages, while army spokesman Simon Tsatsa strangely claimed that soldiers seen at garages were part of a national taskforce, checking out on roadworthiness of vehicles, especially public commuter buses.

The taskforce also includes the police and officials from the state-owned National Oil Company of Zimbabwe, according to Tsatsa.

"They are just checking on the fitness of the vehicles particularly commuter omnibus operators," said Tsatsa.

The government's Vehicle Inspection Department and the police normally check on vehicle roadworthiness at roadblocks and not at private fuel garages.

Zimbabwe's fuel crisis is just one of a myriad of symptoms of the country's seven-year economic recession, marked by the world's highest inflation of 993.6 percent, shortages of electricity, essential medicines, hard cash and just about every basic survival commodity.

The main opposition Movement for Democratic Change party and Western governments blame the crisis on repression and wrong policies by Mugabe such as his seizure of productive farms from whites for redistribution to landless blacks.

The farm seizures destabilised the mainstay agricultural sector and caused severe food shortages after the government failed to give black villagers resettled on former white farms skills training and inputs support to maintain production.

But Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe since the country's 1980 independence from Britain, denies mismanaging the country and says its problems are because of economic sabotage by Western governments opposed to his seizure of white land. - ZimOnline

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