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Tamil Nadu
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Chennai
Chief Secretary and oil company officials say crisis will blow over today CHENNAI: The rush for petrol and diesel in Chennai and the suburbs continued through Monday, leading to a repeat of the chaotic scenes at retail outlets dispensing and nightmarish traffic snarls on Tuesday as well. Besides complaints of shortage and rationing of the fuels and outlets remaining closed, Tuesday saw customers charging some of the bunks with hoarding and overcharging. Though officials of the oil marketing companies said the situation was better than Monday and more loads were despatched to the outlets, long queues of vehicles were seen at the bunks. At many of the outlets such as the one on Venkatnarayana Road, T.Nagar, customers started queuing up early in the morning. An interesting development, amid the fear of the situation only worsening when truckers go on strike from Tuesday midnight, was the increased patronage for public transport and the relatively fewer private vehicles on road. Senior officials of both the Metropolitan Transport Corporation and Southern Railway said the demand for bus and train services rose substantially. The State government held discussions with officials of the companies on Tuesday too. Following the meeting, Chief Secretary L.K. Tripathy told mediapersons that the crisis would be over by Tuesday evening. Making this assertion on the basis of the assurance given by the oil companies, he described the situation as a temporary shortage. He said the demand and supply situation was one of the factors that contributed to the crisis. Karunanidhi concernedAdmitting that the situation had been building up “for the last few days,” he said the State government had taken note of it and the Chief Minister was “quite concerned.” The administration had followed it up with the companies — Indian Oil Corporation, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd and Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd. On the measures being initiated to improve the supply, Mr. Tripathy said that as the problem was acute in Chennai and the surrounding areas, the stocks of petrol and diesel were being diverted to the city. IOC had increased its truck load from 370 to 438. The Chennai Petroleum Corporation Limited would be providing 2,000 kilo litres each to the BPCL and the HPCL. Asked about instances of hoarding and black-marketing, he said action including licence cancellation would be taken against the guilty under the Essential Commodities Act. In a press release, Regional-Level Coordinator of the oil industry (Southern Region) D.S.L. Prasad said the entire operational machinery of the oil companies was being fully utilised to ensure restoration of supplies to the outlets. “By tomorrow [Wednesday], the situation is expected to return to normal conditions.”
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