In a city that accounted for about 93,000 households and housed the mother station for piped natural gas (PNG) about six years ago, only 13,000 residents have got access to the facility for cooking. The inordinate delay in expanding the pipeline network to different parts of the city and the series of hurdles for the Visakhapatnam-Kakinada gas pipeline project seem to have led to the situation.
In sharp contrast, over 16, 000 people from rural pockets submitted their applications in a short span of one month, and a majority of them will their turn in the next couple of months.
The Andhra Pradesh Gas Distribution Corporation (APGDC) is overseeing the distribution of PNG and Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) in the region through Bhagyanagar Gas Limited (BGL) and Godavari Gas Private Limited (GGPL).
BGL is a joint venture (JV) of the GAIL and the HPCL and GGPL is a JV of GAIL and APGDC.
Massive campaign
BGL is taking care of supplying the fuel to households in Kakinada and surrounding towns and GGPL is extending the facility to the households in the remaining parts of East Godavari and West Godavari districts. After launching a massive campaign under the Smart City initiative, the BGL increased its clientèle from 3,000 to 13,000 in the city.
It is learnt that BGL has been facing coordination issues with the local administration and the issue was discussed at length at a high-level meeting conducted by the Energy Department recently.
GGPL, on the other had, received good a response to its free scheme in the rural pockets. In February, it announced free installation scheme offering complete waiver of ₹15,000 on each connection. The idea is that once people from the rural pockets start using the fuel, more and more will get attracted to it, says a senior official from the firm.
