Hyderabad: Consumers are losing Rs 5 crore annually on account of underweight domestic cylinders supplied by gas agencies.
While a domestic cylinder should weigh 14.2 kg, recent raids by the department of Legal Metrology found that almost all cylinders weighed less, ranging from 30 to 100 gram.
Though the amount seems meagre for individual consumers, it works out to crores of rupees for those resorting to pilferage of gas.
In Hyderabad, there are 13 lakh domestic gas connections and 50,000 cylinders are supplied daily. The issue has led to a tussle between the oil marketing companies and the gas agencies while the consumers are at the receiving end.
OMCs have put the blame on gas dealers for underweight cylinders and have even threatened to cancel their dealership. Dealers on the other hand argue that the OMCs themselves supply underweight cylinders from bottling plants and they cannot pilfer gas from sealed cylinders.
The dealers are thus planning to go on an indefinite strike from January 19 to protest the decision of the OMCs holding them responsible for underweight cylinders.
The OMCs have come out with revised marketing discipline guidelines for gas dealers to check the supply of underweight cylinders. Stringent norms such as cancellation of dealerships and imposing hefty fines have been prescribed against dealers if found to be supplying underweight cylinders.
The recent raids by the Department found that there was a shortage of 60 gram of LPG in every 14.2 kg cylinder filled at IOC’s bottling plant in Cherlapally. The plant fills 300 cylinders a day.
Similarly, cylinders weighed 29 grams lesser at the bottling plant of HPCL in Cherlapally, which fills 1,500 cylinders a day.
