Alarmed by rising incidents of theft and adulteration of fuel by tank lorry drivers and assistants, the Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) has decided to introduce digital lock and tracking system.
There are 2,800 registered tank lorries for transporting fuel oil across the country. There are also 100 tankers. But due to lack of digital lock tracking system, incidents like theft and adulteration occur during the transportation.
Sources in the Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources say that recently efforts are being made to bring these tank lorries and tankers under control. For this, digital locks will be installed on each tank and lorry, so that no one can steal or contaminate oil during transportation.
When a digital lock is opened, a signal will automatically reach the owner. If there is a tracking system installed, the owner can see where the tank lorry is located.
Usually, fuel oil is transferred from depot to depot by large ships or rail tankers. But beyond this, fuel oil is transferred from the depots to the filling stations and sold to the customers. In recent times, raids at the petrol pumps revealed the sale of adulterated oil.
The use of petrol (byproduct got from gas fields) mixed with octane had been an old trick by the filling stations. But it stopped because of strict measures by Petrobangla and BPC. However, due to a rise in such adulteration, the government recently decided to bring the oil tankers under surveillance.
A recent meeting of the Energy and Mineral Resources Division discussed adding digital lock and tracking system to the tank lorries. Energy Secretary Nurul Amin immediately ordered the installation of digital locks with tracking system on tank lorries.
Contacted, Secretary Nurul Amin said this system should be added to tank lorries of private companies in the first phase. Then the tank lorries of government institutions should also be brought under control.
The government has recently carried out GPS mapping of the country's energy selling establishments. It was implemented to regulate refuelling stations selling fuel oil and CNG. Now this process will go one step further by digitizing the tank lorries and oil tankers.