REDAN contaminates fuel with water

By Lloyd Rabaya

In a shocking incident, energy giant Redan yesterday contaminated unsuspecting clients’ cars with water, Spiked Online Media can exclusively reveal.

According to an insider who requested anonymity, at least six cars were refueled with water yesterday evening after the heavy rains that hit the capital city.

“Redan put water instead of petrol in clients’ vehicles yesterday at their corner of Seventh and Samora Machel service station around 4 pm.

There is a Nissan X-Trail, Probox, VW Golf 6, Toyota Hilux, Nissan NV300 to name a few, that have reported that they have been victims to the occurrence,” the source told Spiked Media.

After a long dry spell, yesterday, Harare experienced pitchforks and hummer handles of rain and the runoff, according to Tendai Mukamba, Redan Zimbabwe retail territory manager (according to her LinkedIn), went into their service station resulting in water infiltrating their tanks.

“A few cars that were served after the rainfall then reported some faults and on checking for water in our tanks it was discovered that there was some water in the tank.

This type of incident is not unusual in our industry, especially after heavy rainfall. We have however repaired all the affected vehicles and replaced the fuel that was in their tanks.” she said.

Even though she said part of their procedures is checking for water at least three times a day, seemingly, they did not check soon after the devastating rains.

Mukumba also confirmed that the total number of cars that were contaminated is eight.

The Zimbabwe Regulatory Authority (ZERA) weighed in saying the contamination of fuel with water is a fuel quality violation and offenders are prosecuted and given compliance orders to rectify the error.

“After the conviction of the site, the consumer can sue the site for damages and claim compensation.

ZERA inspects the design of manholes at forecourts to ensure they are designed properly to prevent water ingress,” said ZERA CEO Mr. Edington Muzambani.

This comes at a time when a liter of petrol blend is going for US$1.55.

Redan has been in Zimbabwe since 2001 and has over 20 service stations nationwide.