24 January 2014, Lagos – The Weights and Measures Department, WMD, of the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment has vowed to prosecute more companies in the oil and gas sector who cheat by under -dispensing petroleum products to customers.
Engr. Mohammed Sidi, Head of Monitoring and Surveillance unit of the Department, stated this when he sealed two dispensing pumps of NNPC filling station, Gwarimpa and Oando filling station at Ahmadu Bello way for under dispensing petroleum products to customers in Abuja.
“We came to check the accuracy of the equipment, the legality of those equipment and the pre-parked goods being sold in the market which might be short measured, short weighed and used for trading.
“For those defaulters whose dispensing pumps were not within the tolerable error, we have invited them to come to our office, we are going to investigate why they are doing it and we are going to make sure that they revert to normal range and where we found that a marketer had defaulted two or three times we will take him to court for prosecution.
We have just succeeded in winning one of the cases last week as announced by the Federal High Court in Lokoja, others are in progress and we are definitely going to prosecute a good number of them,” he said.
On the issue of agencies overlapping functions, he said that the Weight and Measures Department is the only agency recognised by law to handle, regulate, set, inspect certify all weighing and measuring equipment in Nigeria. He added that the department is not just national but has link with the international weights and measures organisation in Paris.
*Naomi Uzor, Vanguard
