Mphoko’s Feruka claims dismissed

By Bernard Chiketo

MUTARE – Technicians have scoffed at Vice President Phelekezela Mphoko’s phantom claims that Feruka oil refinery was in a derelict state because of a missing part stolen by a white saboteur.

Speaking during his tour at the defunct refinery which was shut down in 1965 after only operating for 15 months, the vice president claimed that a former white employee had stolen a “small valve” on the rusting structure.

Mphoko, a former central intelligence organisation (CIO) operative, revealed how the valve mothballed the plant.

Manicaland minister of State for Provincial Affairs Mandi Chimene demanded that PetroZim, which manages the plant, look into the VP’s claims.

“There was a white man who used to work here who stole a small valve that is missing for the refinery to work.” VP Mphoko claimed.

But Cathrine Katsande, a PetroZim official, queried the VP’s claims insisting instead that a new refinery must be built instead of looking for the valve.

Mphoko said: “I remember when I was still a CIO; we were looking for the device.”

Chimene ordered the parastatal to look into the vice president’s claims.

Katsande said: “The type of crude oil this was designed for is no longer obtaining…The throughput of the refinery is only one million and it was also for the production of petrol then. We need a new refinery with modern technology and the capacity to produce five million litres a day.”

Katsande said replacing the whole structure was cheaper than refurbishing it.

The vice president later reflected and said government must find €70 million to purchase a new refinery either from Uzbekistan or Kazakhstan.

Feruka, Katsande said, is currently operating as a storage, loading, blending and transferring facility.

The facility pumps six million litres of fuel to Harare everyday of which two million is a drag reducing agent to speed up the flow. Daily News