Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Chamber of Bulk Oil Distributors (CBOD), Senyo Hosi has commended the Interim Management Committee of the Tema Oil Refinery actions it has recently taken to stop the theft of petroleum products from the refinery.

He however insists that the best way to deal with the problem once and for all is to exclude politicians from the management and administration of the refinery.

According to Mr Hosi, political appointees with parochial political motivations are largely responsible for poor state of affairs at TOR, leading to paralysing debts, lack of productivity and wanton corruption.

He was speaking in reaction to the announcement of the interdiction of some staff of the Tema Oil Refinery over allegations of theft and malfeasance.

The Interim Management Committee of TOR, which announced the interdictions say the action should send a signal to staff that it has a zero-tolerance policy for unacceptable product losses.

But Mr Hosi says this is not enough.

“There are a lot of underhand dealings or funny things going on in most of our government or state-owned depots. You don’t find these happening in the private depots, he said.

“The losses at TOR are products belonging mainly to our membership. TOR will at some point have to cough up the money to pay, which all comes back to the taxpayer.”

Mr Hosi says the best way to turn TOR around, stop the needless losses and make the refinery a profit-making entity is to keep politicians out of its management and administration.

He said: “TOR has been around since 1961/62. There’s no reason why the private depots should be more professionally ran, honestly ran and competently ran. We have sewage trucks going into [TOR] facilities claiming to extract faecal matter and faecal matter turns into fossil fuel. So it’s impressive that the IMC is taking a bold step and I think they should be encouraged. I want to urge politicians in particular to stay out of the way and let a very honest and professional job be done.”

“TOR and BOST [Bulk Oil Storage Transportation Company] are filled with too many political activists to the extent that it has actually now become detrimental to the honest workers that we have in these institutions. There has to be a proper house-cleaning. It’s a criminal matter, it must be treated as such. It must be treated with the professionalism it deserves and I commend the IMC.”

Speaking on the same GTV programme, private legal practitioner, Anokye Frimpong called for the publication of the names of those found culpable in the ongoing investigations into product theft at TOR.

He agreed with Mr Hosi’s suggestions that politicians should be excluded from the management of TOR.

“If I had a say in national affairs, I would recommend that tomorrow he should be made the chief executive of TOR.

"You see that this man very dispassionately has been able to decipher the problem that we’ve got at TOR which is also the problem we’ve got at every government institution,” Mr Frimpong said.