Indane, the liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) brand from the Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL), has successfully brought down LPG cylinder backlog to under half a day in the State. For customers, this means that many are getting cylinders on the same day that they make the booking. Indane has around 1.20 crore customers in Tamil Nadu.
“We began the exercise last year and brought it down to delivery the next day. Despite the pandemic we managed to retain the same figure and slowly brought it down to 0.5 days on an average,” explained a source in the IOCL.
Asked how the company managed to do it, another official said data from every single distributor was monitored on a daily basis. “Their bookings, pending calls, delivery and corresponding supplies from the LPG bottling plant were keenly watched. Everyone right from the executive director to the LPG team, bottling plant heads, field officers, area officers and distributors were part of the drive to reduce waiting time for consumers,” he said.
At the same time, increased capacity through commissioning of the bottling plant at Tirunelveli, renovating the one at Salem and increasing shifts at Mayiladuthurai helped improve supply.
The move, company sources said, has indeed put pressure on people in the LPG sector. However, they were happy to see it has led to very satisfied customers. “There used to be a time when customers would wait up to two weeks even after a booking. But all that is in the past now,” a retired official said.
Though distributors have expressed happiness over the improvement, they are grumbling over the company arm twisting them into signing memorandum of understandings (MoUs) with the target for the next year.
“They want us to increase customers in both domestic, 5 kg and commercial segments. They want us to have 100% OTP compliance during delivery too. People do not have the money to buy gas cylinders and the subsidy amount has also been cut. There have been instances of people selling cylinders online for money. Hotels and industries are yet to reopen. In such a situation how can we meet these targets,” a distributor said.