Shas­tri Boodan

A cash­less pay­ment sys­tem will soon be avail­able for mo­torists to buy CNG. It will in­volve a ve­hi­cle man­age­ment sys­tem where a com­put­er chip will be in­stalled on cars con­vert­ed by a li­censed CNG con­vert­er so that the mo­torist can sim­ply pull up to the pump, fill up and leave.

NGC CNG pres­i­dent Cur­tis Mo­hammed an­nounced plans for the cash­less sys­tem at the of­fi­cial open­ing of Hark­ness En­er­gy’s Trad­er James Unipet ser­vice sta­tion in Mc Bean, Cou­va, on Thurs­day evening.

The new ser­vice sta­tion is the cul­mi­na­tion of months of plan­ning and col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween Unipet, NGC and Hark­ness En­er­gy to cre­ate a dif­fer­ent busi­ness mod­el. It is the largest ser­vice sta­tion in the Cou­va area and op­er­ates on a 24-hour ba­sis.

Rahul Ram­per­sad, CEO of Hark­ness En­er­gy, said the project start­ed eight years ago and de­spite bu­reau­crat­ic chal­lenges, the vi­sion had come to fruition. Ram­per­sad said his fo­cus would be on cus­tomer ser­vice to win the hearts of the mo­tor­ing pub­lic. He al­so re­vealed that all the staff at the ser­vice sta­tion are from Cou­va and en­vi­rons.

Mo­hammed said four more CNG sta­tions will soon be open­ing at Cyrus Road, El Soc­coro, as well as Munroe Road in Ch­agua­nas, Preysal in Cou­va and O’Meara, Ari­ma.

In ad­di­tion, there will be up­grades to sta­tions at Point Fortin, PTSC in Port of Spain, Rush­worth Street and Mt Lam­bert. Mo­hammed said by the end of this year, 20 CNG sta­tions will be op­er­at­ing in T&T. He said close to 7000 CNG pow­ered ve­hi­cles are in op­er­a­tion and more than 700,000 ve­hi­cles with an av­er­age age of 15 years that can ben­e­fit from CNG.

Unipet Chair­man Dr Afraz Ali said the com­pa­ny’s fo­cus re­mains on di­ver­si­fy­ing its of­fer­ings to the pub­lic in the dri­ve to re­main prof­itable. He said Unipet is keep­ing a close eye on the qual­i­ty of the fu­el sup­plied by Paria as there have been con­sid­er­able loss­es due to changes in tem­per­a­ture. He said the com­pa­ny en­gaged a con­sul­tant to deal with this is­sue and is call­ing for stan­dard tem­per­a­ture ac­count­ing to deal with the loss­es.