How trusting in women is Asam Oil’s secret to success

If you are to list companies that embrace local content policy, then there’s no way for ASAM OIL to miss the pecking order.

Asam Oil, owned by a local entrepreneur, represents few fastest growing oil companies that are major contributors to the country’s GDP and economic growth.

The company is the top mobile fuel direct deliverer in quality, safer, healthier and more productive use of time. They deliver diesel or petrol directly into their friends’ vehicles at home, work and while they are on-the-go. Asam Oil is ideally placed to take customer orders, and deliver them to the customer’s doorstep.

The company, established in 2014, mainly deals in transporting oil and operating retail fuel stations in eight regions including the Engen franchise, and installation of pumping facilities.

The company’s first retail station is located at Vikindu in Coast region and has employed a substantial workforce that can solely achieve its goals.

The oil powerhouse has taken significant measures to set apart from their competitors.  And one of those measures is to ensure all of its retail stations and fuel mobile trucks operate 24 hours unlike others that close at either 22:00 pm or less than that.

The other strategy is improvement of supermarket services available at the company’s retail stations, where they plan to integrate with electronic payment gateway to ease water and electricity bills payments.

Embracing safety practices

Safety practices can be addressed into two aspects; safety on transportation of fuel and rotation of a fuel station. Safety on the rotation of the station begins when a customer arrives at the station. Its policy directs that bodaboda riders should first disembark from their motorcycles before refilling for safety.

A strategy to expand its retail stations by establishing assembling points to accommodate our staff whenever they are at the high risks is devised. On top of that, the company is going to install a special protective pipe underneath to monitor and secure retail stations and the fuel discharge process.

Also, the company complies with safety practices during fuel offloading to the stations for not less than 15 minutes. This is done to keep customers and staff away from explosions, and stabilize stock position.

Again, for showing how much the company cares about the safety of its staff, it doesn’t allow its workers to wear slippers, sandals, or walk barefooted when serving customers, as it is against the policy. The staff are allowed to work in their located posts, if they have protective gear with them.

Women matters at Asam Oil

Asam Oil is one of the few Tanzanian companies that recognizes and respects the role of women in economic development.

And this is confirmed by Scolastica, who is one of the company's truck drivers. Scolastica, a woman who grew up in an elite family, says that truck driving was not the career she had ever dreamed of.

“After being a Form Four failure, I had a predilection for beauty and on that backdrop, I went to pursue it at Kihonda’s VETA College in Morogoro Region.

“While at the college, fortunately, I met a woman at the college taking up a course on operating machinery, being regularly cheered on by  people while on her practical, it gave me an inclination to forgo beauty and jump on dumper operation.”

After the course ended, she got a job at a mining firm and there she became even more inspired after seeing some colleagues driving dump trucks.

Scolastica Misha was nowhere near giving up any of her dreams, she decided to further her education at VETA-Kihonda and after graduation, she applied for a job in various firms.

Currently, Scolastica is a fuel tanker driver at Asam Oil boasting 6 years of work experience. She admits that she has never seen a company that gives a priority to women like Asam Oil.

However, she says the job of truck driving has its challenges, although it does not stave her off from working hard.

“Female truck drivers are few because many companies do not have a good capacity building system for them, and again women themselves are not confident,” she explains.

For her part, Asam Oil’s Mwembeyanga station manager, Ms Hellen Kileo in an interview with this newspaper, says that it was not easy for her to believe in her ability when she was appointed a station manager.

“It's not easy because most people have developed their own mindsets already about women and thus finding them at the top level management is a daydream with a preconception of being more male-dominated platform prevails,” she says.

Hellen has two and a half years in her role and claims that one of the biggest challenges is the existing prejudice against women, which is a global problem.

Responding to the question of why Asam Oil has had more confidence in women than men, she says it is all because the womenfolk are more diligent and honest.

Challenges

Among many other setbacks, Asam Oil fights against fraud. The company sees the light at the end of the tunnel with innovative tracking systems and measurement devices installed at the company to crackdown dishonest drivers.

On another note, the company calls for a single integrated government unit that will enable fuel companies like hers to respond immediately to the requirements.

Milestone

The company sees the increase in the number of retail stations as one of the achievements attained by the company. This has helped to serve remote areas where fuel (diesel or petrol) were previously not accessed.

Asam Oil currently takes huge pride in undertaking the operation of all oil depots in the country.

Future perspective

Looking at these changing times, the company envisions to launch a loyalty card that will enable the customer to get discounted sales of specific services available at the company.

If that is not enough, Asam Oil will entrench self-service mechanism to help customers with a home-like experience.

Besides the company’s activities, giving back to the community is the best thanksgiving in the corporate world as the company plans to launch its dream campaign for planting trees, whereby they target to plant 1 million trees by 2050.