PROGRESSIVE Teachers’ Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ) has
petitioned the High Court seeking an order to reverse last month’s 150% fuel
price hike made by President Emmerson Mnangagwa, arguing that the move was
illegal and unconstitutional.
PTUZ filed the urgent chamber application alongside its
secretary-general Raymond Majongwe, who filed in his personal capacity, while
Mnangagwa, Finance minister Mthuli Ncube, Energy minister Joram Gumbo and the
Zimbabwe Energy Regulatory Authority were cited as co-respondents.
The move to petition the court followed Mnangagwa’s
announcement of new fuel prices on January 12 2019, making the commodity the
most expensive in the world.
“This is an application seeking a provisional order and
then a final order to set aside all recently ordered fuel price rises on the
grounds of being patently illegal and also unconstitutional and of irreparable
harm to us and others,” Majongwe said in his founding affidavit.
In his proclamation, Mnangagwa pegged the price of petrol
at $3,36 from $1,32 and diesel from $1,24 to $3,11. The fuel increase however,
led to violent protests, which resulted in extensive damage to property and
looting. A brutal military crackdown, which ensued, resulted in the death of 17
people, torture and arrest of thousands.
“These increases made our fuel the most expensive in the
world by a long way overnight, as can easily be confirmed from
globalpetrolprices.com. We later found that the Presidential statement on fuel
prices was not binding in law, but merely set as a policy. We have also found
out that for all law-abiding citizens our fuel prices before the increases were
already higher than the fuel prices for all of our neighbours,” Majongwe said.
“We also later found out that two Statutory Instruments
(SI) were published in an extraordinary Government Gazette on the same day as
the President’s statement. The two SIs were apparently meant to give legal
effect to the President’s Press announcement, with the Minister of Finance
increasing duty on petroleum products, while the Minister of Energy prescribed
new pricing formulae for these.”
Majongwe further said Mnangagwa failed to take into account
that some fuel dealers had paid duty at the old rates, which they still had in
stock, resulting in them raking excessive profits.
“The price increase the President ordered for petrol also
exceeded the combined rises in margins and duty per litre on pure petrol. SI 9
hiked duty on leaded and unleaded petrol by 186 cents per litre from 45 cents
to 231 cents. Dealer margins were increased from 12 cents in all under SI 100
of 2015 to 25 cents in all under SI 10 of 2019. This gave a total of 199 cents
per litre in increases, if the petrol being sold here as ‘blend’ is in fact
entirely imported, yet the president ordered an increase of 207 cents in the
petrol price,” he said.
“This application reveals compelling reasons to recognise
that the government order to increase fuel prices was manifestly illegal and
that the statutory instrument increasing excise duties published by the Finance
minister, which underpinned and necessitated the price hikes, was manifestly
ultra vires…”
The matter is pending. Newsday
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