LETTER OF THE DAY - Concerns about E10 gas
Published:Tuesday | June 15, 2010 | 12:00 AM
THE EDITOR, Sir:
The French déjà vu is translated as seen or experienced before with an unsettling or eeriness about the experience. I had a déjà vu moment this past Saturday, June 12 when I watched and listened in horror as an eyewitness told his story on TVJ of a motor vehicle accident in Mandeville.
I paraphrase: "I saw a car speed past me ... I heard the bang ... I heard the cry for help ... I went over to help ... but suddenly the wreck burst into a huge fireball ... I heard them screaming ... But I just couldn't help ... the flames and heat ... you know! Four young Jamaicans involuntary cremated in their motor vehicle even after surviving the accident!"
Déjà vu. Seen before ... eerily so.
Only nine months earlier, exactly the same scene was played out. The eyewitness was surely different but the scene almost identical - that time in Ocho Rios. A young man incorrectly manoeuvred a corner and slammed into a utility pole ... survived the impact (as he was reported to be calling for assistance) but it was not forthcoming, as the eyewitness was unable to render any, as the fireball spontaneously erupted ... the flames and heat ... you know !
What is also eerily the same or déjà vu is the complicity of silence of media, our contemptuously non-perturbed Government and the obfuscation of the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica (PCJ)/PetroJam technocrats. All is well they would have us believe.
I happen to be the lone Jamaican who knows otherwise and I have forewarned and warned, strenuously, the previous energy minister, the previous chairman of PCJ group, previous group managing director of PCJ and the current prime minister about the clear and present danger that PetroJam's E10 ethanol blended gasolene poses to the safety and health of Jamaicans.
Demands on gov't
Jamaicans for a Modern Energy Sector (JAMES), through its convener Trevor Bogle, again calls on the Bruce Golding-led government to effect the following measures in fulfilling its solemn duty to the Jamaican people:
- Direct the total removal of E10 blended gasolene from Jamaica's gasolene pool, on public-safety grounds, immediately.
- Convene a commission of inquiry into PetroJam's E10 gasolene and the links to the five deaths of involuntarily incinerated Jamaicans in their motor vehicles following survivable accidents.
I am, etc.,
Trevor (EnergyMan) Bogle