ZERA Suspends Issuance Of New Urban Fuel Station Licenses

The Zimbabwe Energy Regulatory Authority (ZERA) has temporarily stopped the issuance of new licences for fuel stations in urban areas to address the rapid proliferation of retail filling stations across the country.

ZERA is also considering a new by-law that would require a minimum distance of 15 kilometres between retail service stations.

The authority is pushing for a shift toward containerised or portable fuel retail stations in urban centres to reduce land use.

Speaking at an Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) conference in Harare last Friday, ZERA’s Technical Services Director, Man’arai Ndovorwi, said the authority is working to close all regulatory loopholes to prevent the further proliferation of service stations. He said:

“The issue of mushrooming of service stations in the CBD or in urban centres is, of course, of concern for us, and I think one of the challenges or loopholes that we had in our legislation was the licensing of these sites after they had obtained commercial rights in terms of development of these properties in urban centres.

“However, we are currently in talks with the local authorities to ensure that we revise the by-laws so that the actual permitting and licensing of these service stations is done before the development of these service stations, and so that we also amend our regulations to indicate the minimum distances that should be between service stations.”

Ndovorwi added that new licences will only be granted once the current challenges have been resolved. He said:

“We are happy that the Government, through the Minister of Local Government and Public Works, issued a moratorium in terms of development in urban centres.

“This is also not only impacting in terms of housing developments, but it’s also involving the development of these commercial entities or commercial sites in terms of the development of service stations.

“So that moratorium is also applying to the development of service stations. So, currently, we are not licensing any service stations in urban areas.

“Still, at least we are also working around the issue to ensure that we have minimum safe distances between these service stations being established.”

More: The Herald

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