The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : And now, it is officers’ strike which adds fuel to the fire

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Thursday, Jan 08, 2009
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

And now, it is officers’ strike which adds fuel to the fire

Special Correspondent

Petrol bunks situated in and around Chennai are running out of stock

Panic booking of refills, which was done when the bulk LPG tankers’ strike began recently,
has gone up now

— Photo : R. Ravindran

DRY: A petrol bunk at Royapettah wears a deserted look after it ran out of stock on Wednesday.

CHENNAI: Day one of an indefinite strike by officers of public sector oil companies on Wednesday saw petrol bunks in and around Chennai running out of stocks and almost all liquefied petroleum gas distributors going without fresh load of cylinders.

Operations at the installations of Indian Oil Corporation and Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd, particularly bottling plants and oil terminals, were affected as a handful of senior officials struggled to keep the facilities running.

Almost similar was the scenario at Chennai Petroleum Corporation Ltd’s refinery in suburban Manali, where according to sources in the oil industry, some units were being shut down. The sources added that HPCL officers were not participating in the strike.

Describing the situation at IOC’s bottling plant in Ennore as “bad,” a senior official of the company said though the staff were on duty, cylinder loads could not be despatched as necessary documents had to be signed by the officers.

The production at the facility dropped by half, he said, adding that the plant on a normal day despatched 100 loads.

Sources in BPCL said no work was conducted at the bottling plant in Gummidipoondi, which caters for about 10 lakh customers in the city and suburbs, and the oil terminal in north Chennai.

Sources among Indane distributors said that only a few of them received loads on Wednesday and even they were loaded on to the trucks on Tuesday late evening. The rest of the distributors did not get any load until Wednesday evening, though officials maintained that about 50 loads were ready for despatch since afternoon at the Ennore facility.

Panic booking of refills by customers, which began when the bulk LPG tankers went on a strike recently, only mounted.

According to M.Kannan, president, Tamil Nadu Petroleum Dealers’ Association, several petrol bunks in and around the city have started running of out of stocks. “If the strike continued on Thursday, the situation could turn serious.”

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