A meeting convened by the District Collector with the stakeholders on Sunday decided that movement of LPG lorries would be allowed without cleaners for a period of three days to meet the emergency-like situation. With this decision LPG movement was expected to be back to normal from Monday, said a spokesman for the lorry drivers.
A serious shortage of cooking gas looms over central Kerala with most of the gas distributors complaining on Sunday that they had not received regular supplies from May 20.
The distributors, numbering about 30 from Ernakulam district alone, are meeting officials of the Indian Oil Corporation in the city on Monday to discuss “shortage of supplies and ways to meet the backlog”. Distributors from neighbouring Alappuzha and Kottayam districts will also be part of the delegation meeting IOC officials.
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The shortage has been triggered by a strike by lorry drivers and crew serving IOC’s bottling plant at Udayamperoor. The strike began after the owners of the tankers allegedly failed to pay the January to March arrears in wages increment for the period. However, the arrears have now been paid almost fully but lorries have been held up by another issue.
The district administration had issued orders that it will stop all lorries plying without cleaners. A driver serving the IOC’s Udayamperoor plant said that there were only 15 lorries that had cleaners. There were a total of about 160 lorries serving the Udayamperoor plant, he said.