'Garages must close at night'

2008-07-15 15:53

Johannesburg - Petrol stations need to close shop at night otherwise up to 15% percent will shut down before year-end, the Fuel Retailers Association warned on Tuesday.

"It is too expensive and too dangerous to stay open at night," said CEO Peter Morgan.

The Fuel Retailers Association is now asking its 1 500 members - all of them service station owners - for a mandate to lobby the government to put pressure on oil companies to allow them to close shop at night.

Morgan said it was expensive to keep petrol stations open at night in the current economic environment.

"We are a regulated industry and we can't change our prices. Yet costs are going up and volumes are going down."

He said high crime rates at petrol stations at night exacerbated the situation. "We have ATM (automated teller machine) bombings, cash heists and consumers driving off without paying."

Many of the association's members were currently under so much pressure that they were considering closing down. But if oil companies gave them permission to close their doors at night, it would save their businesses.

"I would rather have service stations survive 'by closing at night' than lose between 10% and 15% of service stations by the end of the year," said Morgan.

There are about 4 800 petrol stations in South Africa.

Petrol stations were bound by their contracts with oil companies to stay open at night.

"We closed service stations at night in the 1970s. Why can't we do it again?" Morgan asked, adding that a few stations could remain open to accommodate motorists on main roads.

Morgan said he had raised the issue with the director general of minerals and energy and that he was now trying to get a mandate from his members to lobby the government to put pressure on oil companies to change the rules.

"The oil companies have come up with no suggestions 'as to how to help struggling service stations', so we'll try and get the government to put pressure on them."

- SAPA

- SAPA