Mo­torists will still be able to pay for fu­el us­ing deb­it and cred­it cards at the 24 Unit­ed In­de­pen­dent Pe­tro­le­um Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (Unipet) ser­vice sta­tions across the coun­try.

Al­though ser­vice sta­tion deal­ers rep­re­sent­ed by the Pe­tro­le­um Deal­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (PDA) say they will stop ac­cept­ing elec­tron­ic pay­ments for fu­el pur­chas­es from to­mor­row, Unipet CEO Dex­ter Ri­ley said the com­pa­ny has not made any pol­i­cy de­ci­sions on the mat­ter.

He said: "At Unipet, we are con­tin­u­al­ly re­view­ing our cost struc­ture, we have not made a pol­i­cy de­ci­sion with re­spect to that call for ac­tion. Our first ap­proach is to find cost cut­ting mea­sures that won't ad­verse­ly im­pact the pub­lic."

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Unipet said it re­spects the de­ci­sion of op­er­a­tors to dis­con­tin­ue ac­cept­ing elec­tron­ic trans­ac­tions as that ac­tion "re­flects the dire fi­nan­cial cir­cum­stances which op­er­a­tors face in pro­vid­ing a safe and ef­fi­cient ser­vice to the mo­tor­ing pub­lic and the in­dus­tri­al sec­tor."

Unipet said gas sta­tion op­er­a­tors are func­tion­ing on mar­gins set by Gov­ern­ment since 2005.

"Giv­en in­fla­tion­ary trends and in­creased costs, op­er­a­tors are now run­ning their busi­ness­es on $3.95 on every $100 spent on su­per gaso­line.

"Look­ing at a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion, house­holds to­day can­not cov­er their costs on the ba­sis of 2005 wages so op­er­a­tors have a tremen­dous chal­lenge to main­tain the same lev­el of ser­vice to the pub­lic on con­trolled mar­gins which have re­mained un­changed since 2005. It is our hope that this mat­ter will be re­viewed by the Gov­ern­ment and ac­tion will be tak­en to sta­bilise the in­dus­try," Unipet said.

In Ju­ly, PDA pres­i­dent Robindranath Narayns­ingh warned that the coun­try's 170 gas sta­tions were on the verge of col­lapse due to poor prof­itabil­i­ty mar­gins from the sale of fu­el. On Wednes­day, the group an­nounced that its sta­tions will no longer of­fer elec­tion­ic pay­ment op­tions ef­fec­tive to­mor­row.

The PDA said in a state­ment: "At this time the re­tail pe­tro­le­um deal­ers are faced with the dif­fi­cult de­ci­sion of ei­ther op­er­at­ing un­der-staffed, in­con­ve­nient sta­tions, or re­duc­ing the cost of op­er­a­tions, in or­der to re­tain the em­ploy­ees that make your gas-pur­chas­ing ex­pe­ri­ence safe, com­fort­able and ef­fi­cient.

"While our pri­ma­ry du­ty re­mains the pro­vi­sion of fu­el to the na­tion's con­sumers, we al­so have du­ty to the peo­ple we em­ploy, who aid us in said fu­el pro­vi­sion. Our in­dus­try is reg­u­lat­ed by the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries, and spe­cif­ic to the at-pump price of fu­el, the Min­istry of En­er­gy works in con­junc­tion with the Min­istry of Fi­nance to set this cost. Every part of the sys­tem that brings fu­el from ground to tank, is gov­erned by the Pe­tro­le­um Act, 62.01."

The PDA said 200 per cent in­creas­es in the Busi­ness Levy and Green Fund Levy in Jan­u­ary had the ef­fect of "im­me­di­ate­ly desta­bil­is­ing the busi­ness of re­tail­ing fu­el."

"You may have al­ready no­ticed that small­er, neigh­bour­hood gas sta­tions have been shut­ting down af­ter years in op­er­a­tion, un­able to pay the staff re­quired for op­er­at­ing and the steep in­creased tax­es manda­to­ry to our sec­tor.

"We ap­pre­ci­ate the in­con­ve­nience that this pos­es to those who have en­joyed the fa­cil­i­ty of elec­tron­ic pay­ment pro­cess­ing, and we are aware that is equal­ly in­con­ve­nient to the deal­ers. How­ev­er, this is the least jar­ring mea­sure we can take to keep our na­tion's gas sta­tions in op­er­a­tion, there­by keep­ing the ve­hi­cles in our hard-work­ing pop­u­la­tion fu­elled as well."