 "Good news: Buy mini 5-kg gas cylinders at petrol pumps from today")
New Delhi: Cooking gas (LPG) will now beavailable at select petrol pumps in metro cities after the OilMinistry has allowed sale of small 5-kg cylinders at retailoutlets.It has also permitted LPG connection portability,allowing consumers to choose or change cooking gas dealer at press of a button.
LPG 5-kg cylinders will be available at company-owned-company-operated (COCO) petrol pumps, which make up for just 3percent of over 47,000 petrol pumps in the country.However, they will be priced at market rate which is morethan double the subsidised price of Rs 410 per 14.2-kgcylinder in Delhi.
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t has also permitted LPG connection portability, allowing consumers to choose or change cooking gas dealer at press of a button, Reuters[/caption]
Oil Minister M Veerappa Moily will launch the sale of5-kg cylinder at Bangalore on October 5. Initially, LPGcylinder sale will be restricted to COCO petrol pumps inDelhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Bengaluru.
Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleumtogether have 1,440 COCO pumps all over the country. Thenumber of outlets in the five cities initially chosen forlaunch of the scheme would be a few dozen.
“This will be a boon to migratory population such asstudents, IT professionals, BPO employees and persons with oddduty timings as it would provide them the flexibility to pickup cylinders and obtain subsequent refills at time of theirchoice as petrol stations are open for longer hours,” thestatement said.
In another initiative, the ministry has allowed inter-company LPG portability.
Presently, an LPG consumer isattached to a distributor and cannot change his distributoreven if he is unhappy with the service.“Under the portability scheme, a consumer can now opt forthe distributor of his choice within a cluster of LPGdistributors in the vicinity and across the oil companies,“the statement said, adding that the scheme would be availablein 30 cities.
“Consumers will be able to see the service ratings of allthe distributors in their cluster and choose the one they wantbased on service levels,” the statement said.
To make it easier for consumers, the option can beregistered electronically on the website of the oil marketingcompanies they are attached to.
Electronic tracking of the potability request and closureis in place to ensure that a consumer does not have anydifficulty in moving to a distributor of his choice.
The LPG portability scheme will be initially available inHyderabad and Vishakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh; Patna inBihar; Raipur in Chhatisgarh; Delhi; Ahmedabad and Surat inGujarat; Faridabad in Haryana; Jamshedpur and Ranchi inJharkhand; Bangaluru and Hubli in Karnataka.
The other places are: Kochi and Trivandrum in Kerala;Bhopal and Indore in Madhya Pradesh; Mumbai, Pune and Nagpurin Maharashtra; Bhubaneshwar in Orissa; Chandigarh andLudhiana in Punjab; Jaipur and Jodhpur in Rajasthan; Chennaiand Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu; Lucknow and Kanpur in UttarPradesh; Dehradun in Uttaranchal and Kolkata in West Bengal.
PTI