Dimapur, Oct. 11 (EMN): An organisation of LPG dealers in Kohima has refuted allegations of black marketing and illegal business practices from the Nagaland Voluntary Consumers’ Organisation (NVCO) and the Association of Kohima Municipal Wards Panchayat (AKMWP). The All Kohima Indane Distributors Association issued a press release on Thursday calling for action to prosecute LPG black marketers.
According to the allegation of the NVCO, the press release stated, shortage of LPG in Kohima led to ‘proliferation of the black market.’ The AKMWP also accused a gas distributor called Seyie Gas, for issuing LPG only once a week, “which was making the customers queue up from 1 am yet unable to get a single cylinder.” It allegedly encouraged black marketers to hike LPG prices to a whooping INR 2,000 per cylinder, the association stated.
Here, the association instead blamed “Kohima road block” for the shorateg of LPG in the capital. “There is definitely shortage of LPG due to Kohima road block mostly in July and August 2018 for natural calamities in addition to north eastern states LPG bandh and government holidays.
Therefore, there is tremendous LPG backloads, which is the reason for a very high demand of LPG at Kohima and to meet the abnormally high demand is taking time at present,” the association stated. LPG customers are requested to be patient for a few more weeks “so as to normalise the situation.”
In regard to black marketing, the LPG distributors of Kohima have informed that “whosoever, notices any LPG cylinders in black market as stated, should be immediately ceased with the help of district administration and trace out the supply source of such grey cylinders.” But “to our surprise,” the distributors stated, ‘they would never try to catch those alleged black marketers whom they claimed to have known.’
‘Easy to catch black marketers’
The LPG dealers also made a curious statement: “It is easy to catch black marketers if they exist and one is prepared to take some simple and practical legal actions because not even a single LPG cylinder is manufactured at Kohima.”
According to the association, the “ceasing of grey cylinders” and tracing its supply source “is only the solution.” If the cylinders are found to be issued against proper booking in accordance with IOCL norms and were issued against genuine cards, the distributor is not at fault “but the customers who lend their LPG cards to the middleman for the purpose of black marketing, then those customers and the middleman are the culprits.”
In such cases, the group stated, the district administration can “comfortably arrest the black marketers along with the guilty customers.”
The organisation assured: ‘We the LPG distributors of Kohima shall support such move whole heartedly. Or if, the cylinders are traced and found to be pilfered then we must catch those notorious culprits immediately instead of accusing each other within our own comfort zones without doing anything.
We need to take action together to solve the problem and not play the blame game for every problem we face on the daily.’
In regard to the distributor called Seyie Gas Service, the associated stated that “we have never delivered any LPG cylinder to anyone without checking the right weight and gas quality since the inception, as our duty is to deliver the full quantity, IOCL specified quality, deliver the same in time and in the right control price to our valued customers at all cost and always.”
Whosoever were in the queue are ‘either given filled cylinders or a token card for the delivery in the same week and no one had ever been sent back empty handed as wildly claimed,’ it added.
