It is now close to four months since Malawians started sleeping and spending long hours at fuel filling stations in search of petrol and diesel, the two commodities without which, the engines that run this country, literally come to a halt.

When the issue of the scarcity of fuel was first reported, Malawi Energy Regulatory Authority (Mera) and National Oil Company of Malawi (Nocma) downplayed the issue and promised that the scarcity was just a sporadic shortage in a few places and not enough to cause panic. Whereas the Tonse Alliance worshippers accused the opposition and others of creating ‘fake’ rumours to undermine the current government’s achievements.

Several months later, the situation is not getting any better but worse. Long queues have become the order of the day. To make it even worse, cartels have taken over and are selling fuel on the black market at prices as high as K5 000 per litre. Malawians are being ripped off their hard-earned money which is already not enough to sustain their daily living.

What is more worrying is that the black market has become the only reliable source of fuel. In many cases, people are left with no choice but to buy fuel on the black market because fuel filling stations are going days on end with snaking queues even when there is no fuel.

The country risks being run by these cartels and chaos will reign if the government does not step in to tame the illegal fuel markets which are slowly being normalised because of the failure of the government to find a lasting solution to fuel woes.

Strangely though, despite these glaring problems, there is a deafening silence from the government and the leaders on what they are doing in addressing the problem which has crippled operations in all sectors. People now spend more productive hours, searching or queuing for fuel than they spend on working.

If there is a time that Malawians would have loved to hear their President speak, this is the time. The chaos that is being witnessed now since has been soft on fuel cartels will be hard to tame in the long-run. Government must, first of all, ensure the fuel shortage is addressed and this will then put the cartels out of business. Right now, they are flourishing at the back of a government that seems clueless on how to end the fuel woes.

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