State institutions set up to ensure safety regulations at the various gas filling stations must ensure they work to expectation, Kwame Jantuah, an energy expert and Vice President of the Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC), has said.

According to him, it was not the duty of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to have instituted safety measures for the fillings stations following the gas explosion that occurred at the Atomic Junction, Madina, on Saturday October 6.

Following that explosion which killed seven persons and injured over 135 people, the President has ordered the “immediate cessation, until further notice, of all construction of facilities intended for use as gas or petroleum retail stations”.

Additionally, the President has also directed the shutdown of all high-risk Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) stations across the country.

Commenting on this development on TV3’s New Day programme on Saturday, October 14 Mr Jantuah said: “Is it government’s responsibility to put in these measures? Is it the President’s responsibility to put these measures in place? It is the responsibility the regulator, it is not the President’s responsibility to do what he has done. Commendable as it is, it is not his responsibility, it is the reasonability of the regulator and it has to be a continuous on-going thing.

“How many times a year does EPA monitor these stations? Twice a year, which is very inadequate. We are dealing with a highly inflammable substance.

“I don’t think it is the duty of the President to do what he has done, it is the regulator’s.”