INDENI, TAZAMA WORKERS IN LIMBO

By NATION REPORTER UNCERTAINTY has gripped over 500 workers at Indeni Petroleum Refinery and Tazama Pipelines Limited over the future of the two firms which have not been processing and selling fuel for the last one year. Workers in Ndola at the two giant parastatal firms complained that the country was no longer importing crude oil for processing at Indeni and eventual sale by Tazama because Government had now allowed Oil Marketing Companies (OMC) to import finished products. As a result, some non-essential workers had been sent on recess as there were no significant activities. The firms last received feedstock in 2020 Tazama Pipeline Limited imports and pumps the crude oil along the pipeline which runs from Dar-es-Salaam to Ndola while the subsidiary, Tazama Petroleum Products Limited was established to market and sell the finished products after being processed at Indeni. However, workers expressed worry that the companies were now “white elephants” and that their jobs were no longer secure. National Union of Transport and Allied Workers (NUTAW) President, Kingsley Kachenjela, appealed to Government to implement a policy which would allow Indeni to import feedstock directly from suppliers. “We would like to call on Government to urgently implement policy reforms and allow Indeni to procure feedstock with the help of financial partners, refine and offload finished petroleum products on the Zambian market. “Relying on others as importers of finished products has proved to be disastrous as we are now killing vital infrastructure at Indeni and Tazama,” Mr Kachenjela said. He said Government had “ring-fenced” Indeni and Tazama from privatisation because of the critical nature of the energy industry in national development and thus demanded that jobs at the two vital institutions must be saved.