It is good that government has moved at last to tackle the question of fuel smuggling. This has been rampant for many years, as noted in a previous editorial, and was costing the country hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue.

It has to be said in retrospect that very little purposeful action was taken to deal with the problem. A simple chat with some of the legitimate petrol station owners and the oil companies would have shown that there were numerous open abuses that could easily have been stopped, thus limiting the activity of the smugglers. For example, one station owner has pointed out that petrol tankers should never be coming east across the Demerara Harbour Bridge. All the Georgetown stations are supplied from depots in Georgetown. Any tanker coming over the bridge into Georgetown with fuel was therefore clearly engaged in the distribution of smuggled fuel. This issue, the gas station owners say, was raised with the relevant minister years ago but no effective action was taken and this open act of smuggling continued.

Similarly, it was pointed out to the authorities that tankers were sometimes seen crossing on the ferry to New Amsterdam. In the first place that is extremely dangerous and could lead to an explosion and loss of life. Secondly, none of the legitimate companies distribute fuel in that way. Here again no action was taken.

More than that, however, surely it would not have been difficult to trap the stations that sell smuggled fuel, some of which are well known to the authorities. In the first place though they obviously have to buy some of their fuel from legitimate sources to create some official records there is in practice a huge gap between what they buy from official sources and what they sell. Fuel sales are registered in the pumps and an investigation of any depth should easily have been able to ascertain the discrepancy and prosecute those involved.

The government has at long last come to grips with the fact that it has been losing huge revenues due to fuel smuggling and has instituted an expensive system to stop the rot. This is all well and good, better late than never, but a lot more could have been done to get behind the culprits who have been openly selling and distributing smuggled fuel for years. The smuggling in of fuel by boat from Venezuela and Suriname which starts the whole process has also been a well known abuse that has gone on for too long, virtually unchecked. It is hoped that the task force the government has set up will take firm action to close all the various loopholes.