Product Diversion: PEF Introduces Tracking Device

Determined to arrest the rising spate of product diversion, the Petroleum Equalisation Fund (PEF) has introduced a tracking device that will ensure availability of petroleum products in all pars of he country. Unfolding the new package in Abuja last week, the Executive Secretary of the management board of the Fund, Mrs. Adefunke Kasali assured that the system would ensure efficiency, accountability and the elimination of errors in the processing of marketers’ claims.
According to her, under the system, tracking devices are installed on marketers’ trucks, thus automatically capturing details of the vehicles and their contents, including persons and the quantity of whatever product is being carried.
These data would then be simultaneously transmitted to several servers in different locations, including the point of origin and destination as well as the data centre in PEF headquarters in Abuja.
“Based on the principle of the system, where the truck must leave and arrive, it’s safe to say that diversion will be very difficult in that environment. “But when the mobile computer records that a truck belonging to XYZ marketer leaves that place, that transaction can never be processed in PEF’s system unless it terminates and the only way that transaction can close for us to be able to process it is that that truck must get there and be received,” she said.
She however admitted that the new system is not infallible as according to her, it can not totally eradicate the problem of product diversion.