Kairouan local Mahmoud Ayashi is thin, in his 30s and he wears what mechanics normally wear. He also works out of the basement of a four-storey building in a residential district. But Ayashi is no mechanic; he is one of this Tunisian city’s many fuel smugglers.
He is quick to tell that his work is dangerous and requires much effort.
Kairouan local Mahmoud Ayashi is thin, in his 30s and he wears what mechanics normally wear. He also works out of the basement of a four-storey building in a residential district. But Ayashi is no mechanic; he is one of this Tunisian city’s many fuel smugglers.
He is quick to tell that his work is dangerous and requires much effort.
“The round trip from Kairouan to the Algerian border takes five to six hours,” Ayashi explains how things work. “There are middle men on the borders and they bring fuel over in 20 to 100 liter containers – so there’s no need for me to even step on Algerian soil.”
Like most fuel smugglers, Ayashi uses a light truck or ute to move the fuel around. Often the trucks are rented. And the main risks, Ayashi says, are being caught by customs or security officials. If this happened, the cost could be imprisonment, a dangerous pursuit on the road or a hefty bribe.
“Bribery is accepted by security officials. If you don’t pay, your truck is impounded. It’s a tough business,” Ayashi admitted. “But we don’t have many other options. I’ve applied for so many jobs. I think the Tunisian authorities should be creating more jobs so that young people don’t have to get involved in this. Young smugglers don’t want to get rich,” he notes. “They just want to survive.”
In the meantime, the burgeoning fuel smuggling business is causing plenty of headaches – both for the owners of licensed fuel stations and for the provincial authorities and customs officers. While the Kairouan province has around 40 licensed petrol stations, there are many more unlicensed ones, as well as warehouses for smuggled fuel. Before the Tunisian revolution the National Chamber of Fuel Agents estimated that up to 400 parallel sales points existed. After the revolution though, they lost count.
And these smuggled fuel sellers can be dangerous for many others, even those not involved in fuel smuggling.
Recently a warehouse filled with smuggled fuel in Kairouan’s Taquilla neighborhood caught fire; it took firemen three hours to extinguish the blaze and adjacent homes and buildings also sustained considerable damage as well as loss of power.
Although many neighbors of the warehouse got together to decry the incident and to complain about the fact that officials allowed fuel smugglers to operate here, the warehouse owner resumed his illegal work eventually. There have also been fires at places where the illegal fuel is being sold, residents say. These places are like time bombs waiting to explode, remarked one neighbor.
In other incidents, trucks carrying smuggled fuel have crashed or caught fire. One crash saw six parked cars go up in flames, another resulted in three deaths after a smuggler’s truck being chased by security personnel crashed into a tree.
Additionally the poor quality of the smuggled fuel can put the lives of drivers or their cars’ engines at risk.
It seems that those most affected though are the owners of licensed fuel stations in the area.
The parallel market is undermining the Tunisian economy, one licensed fuel seller in Kairouan said. There’s an impact on the environment, people’s health, traffic and even on the state itself, due to lost tax revenues. The fuel stations themselves have lost their revenues and many are on the brink of bankruptcy, he complained.
Because of the increasing number of accidents and complaints from the owners of licensed fuel stations, Kairouan governor, Abdul Majid Lagwan, launched a campaign to discourage the storage and sale of smuggled fuel.
And Kairouan’s Head of Customs, Hafez Azizi, says that his officers managed to confiscate more than 2.7 million liters of smuggled fuel, worth around TND4 million (around US$2.4 million), in the first three months of 2013. After it is confiscated the fuel is taken to the Société Nationale de Distribution du Pètrole (SNDP), the national distribution and marketing company for petrol in Tunisia.
However it doesn’t seem that fuel smuggling will be all that easy to stamp out. Azizi says there are certain smuggler’s routes that his staff find particularly difficult to patrol. Additionally the fuel smugglers make decent profits from their work, around TND2 dinars per 20 liter container they sell to black market stations in the province. And as fuel prices have been rising in Tunisia, customers of black market fuel are also saving money: one local farmer tells that he actually saves money around TND60 dinars (around US$36) daily for his four vehicles.
Additionally it seems that the smuggled fuel that’s confiscated is often later sold on by the state – and, despite its quality, that may be back to the licensed fuel stations. Impounded vehicles and any fines levied also go the state.
So while everyone is profiting in this way, it seems likely fuel smugglers like Mahmoud Ayashi will just continue going about their tough, dangerous business.
