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Monday, Nov 10, 2008
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Protest by truckers affects LPG supplies

Special Correspondent

— Photo: S.S. Kumar

LPG supplies in Chennai have come under strain.

CHENNAI: After rains and bad roads, trucks transporting cylinders to distributors’ godowns derailed liquefied petroleum gas supplies to thousands of households in the city.

Sources among Indane distributors said supplies from the bottling plant of Indian Oil Tanking Ltd in suburban Manali were hit for three days last week following protests in support of better remuneration by the crew of the trucks attached to the plant.

Close to 40 per cent of the nearly 120 Indane distributors in and around Chennai are attached to the plant, while the rest are served by Indian Oil Corporation’s facility in Ennore.

Confirming the protests, including a ‘go slow’ by the truckers, a senior official of Indian Oil Corporation said as many as 85 trucks are on contract with IOC to transport cylinders from the plant in Manali. Though supplies were made to the distributors from Ennore plant, it was not sufficient to meet 100 per cent demand of those served by the Manali facility.

As a result, the time taken to supply the LPG refills would only mount. It takes anywhere between 6-10 days now, beyond the mandatory three-week gap between two refills. A distributor said that there were some signs of disruption in the supplies from Ennore plant a few days ago after the protest spread there.

Both the official and the distributors, however, said the situation would be returning to normality shortly, as many of the trucks resumed supplies on Saturday evening.

A distributor attached to the Ennore plant said that there was no problem with regard to the supplies.

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