By Pooja Mahesh:
The National Federation of LPG of India (NFLDU) has stated that it may go to a strike on the October 1, 2012. NFLDI has made this decision in light of the government’s decision on restricting every household to six cylinders per year stating that they cannot ‘police’ the rates.
With the government decision, every household will get six 14.2-kg LPG cylinders at a subsidized rate of Rs. 399. NFLDI, which represents around 10,500 companies which sell cooking gas, wants to have a uniform pricing on the Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) and they have further stated that they will not allow the government to take a unilateral step such as this.
With such limitation, especially when gas cylinders in the market are so much more expensive than those available by the distributors, it is understandable that the organization is taking such a strong measure to get the attention of the government. They are clearly anguished and angered by the decision as they feel it will only add on to the agony of the consumers and the distributors will be held accountable.
In their official statement, the NFLDI have specified the recursions of such a step, “The distributors who were already struggling due to the menace of dual pricing, inadequate commission, ineffective cylinder seal, forced VIP off-takes and supply system that is not fool proof, are now being forced to except the newly implemented triple rate policy without giving adequate commission.” After all, who can blame the distributors if such activities are happening and with this new rule, it will affect them even more severely.
In the aforementioned ‘uniform price’, the distributors can be seen to be backing this by demanding a single price including a commission of Rs. 65 for every cylinder. By doing so they would be levelling themselves with those which are available commercially. The statement went on to postulate that without prior consultation, “wrong policies are being adopted that will create a black market and promote unfair trade practices”.
The LPG distributor impending strike can be seen as a series of onslaughts against the government, who are probably not working with the people. This outrage not only shows a disgruntled distributors but also those who are getting affected by such strikes — the common man. With one major strike having just passed us by last week on the diesel price hike earlier this month, we wonder what changes this strike can bring into the country.
Quotes courtesy