Liam McNally
A Bacchus Marsh service station owner is calling on police to act after a sharp increase in fuel thefts over summer.
APCO Bacchus Marsh owner Narinder Uppal said summer is usually the worst period for “drive-offs”, but this year had been particularly bad, with six in December, and another six in the first two weeks of January.
“Lately it has become a pretty big problem. This week has been really bad, we’ve had five drive-offs, normally we wouldn’t get that in a month,” she said.
“It takes a toll on us, especially the operators, they get affected the most because they have a job to do and they’re trying to do the best they can. There’s people just out there who do the wrong thing but then they don’t understand what effect they have on other people.“
Ms Uppal said she uses security camera footage to search the number plates of those perpetrating drive-offs on VicRoads registration check, and finds the majority of them come back as “not found”, or with the plates not matching the vehicle.
“In the last 7 years I’ve been at APCO, every drive-off that we’ve had I’ve never seen money coming back from cars with unrecognised plates,” she said.
“If it’s like 500 dollars that I’ve got to pay out of my pocket… I’ve got to fork money out from my savings or something.”
Another Bacchus Marsh service station told Star Weekly drive-offs are a common problem, while three others said they only occurred once or twice a month.
Bacchus Marsh sergeant Matthew Watts said police have received reports of recent incidents of theft of petrol from service stations in the Bacchus Marsh area “and are currently investigating these matters”.
“All service station operators are encouraged to report any petrol thefts to the police and provide CCTV footage of the incident to assist with the police investigation,” he said.
