Praja Vikas Seva Trust, a non-governmental organisation, will carry out a Statewide campaign to discuss and find solutions to issues afflicting consumption and distribution of domestic cooking gas. The trust will discuss a wide range of issues such as problems arising from the cap on subsidised LPG cylinders and problems in the distribution of gas cylinders,
Although a discussion in the city on Sunday did not attract much public interest, a few important issues came to the fore.
Displaying two gas cards, a complainant said two persons in Kaikamba had applied for a second cylinder in 2007 and 2011 respectively. However, that the distributor had turned down the the requests citing shortage of cylinders. “How long do they wait for an extra cylinder? When one cylinder gets over, they have to wait for days or weeks for the replacement,” he said.
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Another issue that came up was the delay in booking cylinders. Dharmendra K. of Praja Vikas Seva Trust said that while some distributors would deliver the cylinder in 10 days after the stipulated time of 21 days between bookings was over, other agencies cited “created” rules such as two weeks of delivery time after the 30 days between bookings. “Some have said bookings can only be done online, whereas when the company was contacted, they refuted such arrangements,” he said.
The handful of people who attended the meet asked for more clarity and awareness in the guidelines for number of days between bookings, the number of days a distributor could take to deliver a cylinder after a booking was placed, and the exact price of cylinder.
The organisation urged the State Government to extend subsidies to at least 12 cylinders annually. They slammed the Centre for passing on to consumers the burden of higher commissions demanded by distributors.
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The campaign will kick-start with a discussion meet scheduled in Udupi district in two weeks, followed by a meeting in the city on October 21.