Indore (Madhya Pradesh): The first day of the New Year that began in a joyful atmosphere Year soon shook the common man as by 10 am information spread over social media about the disruption created by the drivers in the city, frightening the common people. Information started doing the rounds that owing to a surprise strike by vehicle drivers, petrol supply to pumps is getting affected and pumps have started going dry.
In panic, people rushed to the petrol pumps to fill up the petrol tanks of their vehicles creating long queues at petrol pumps. By the afternoon over 30 petrol pumps out of 100 located in the city became dry. There are a total of 270 petrol pumps in the city.
But timely steps taken by the district administration averted a full-blown petrol scarcity. By late evening the supply of petrol was restored. Collector Ilayaraja T has clarified that there is no holiday in schools on Tuesday and people should not feel panicky regarding the petrol supply situation.
The collector has instructed that continuous supply of petrol, diesel and LPG should be maintained in the district. Additional collector Gaurav Bainal called a meeting of officials of the Oil Companies BPCL, IOCL, HPCL, Tanker Transport Association and Driver Union.
After the meeting, Bainal informed this correspondent that in the meeting everyone was asked to maintain the supply of petrol, diesel and LPG. The issues of the drivers’ union were heard in the meeting and their misconceptions were resolved. They were advised not to get misled by anyone and to submit a memorandum in writing to the district administration of their complaints. The drivers were assured that their demand would be immediately sent to higher levels of the government for appropriate action.
CL Mukati of the Truckers Association said that no strike has been authorised yet and appealed to association members to continue to transport diesel, petrol and LPG uninterruptedly for the convenience of the general public. Thereafter all drivers and transporters returned to work. Till late evening more than 100 tankers had reached the petrol pumps.
The collector has given instructions to the officials of all the concerned departments that special care should be taken to ensure that the supply of petrol, diesel and LPG to the general public is not disrupted in any way. Rajendra Singh Vasu, president of Indore Petroleum Dealers Association informed that the situation will become normal by Tuesday morning.
