Gas dealers take consumers for a ride

Nellore: Gas dealers in the district collected Rs 150 as service charge from each consumer and issued smart cards. The amount comes to more than Rs 12 crore mounting huge burden on the consumers. Even though, they had collected Rs 150 from each consumer and again collected Rs 20 while handing over cards to them.

In fact, a team of outsourced employees of all gas dealers started collecting Rs 150 from each gas consumer in the month of November last saying they would be issuing smart cards to the people for easy payment in the light of difficulties being faced for digital transactions. They also said this would relieve pressure from transactions using debit or credit cards and lack of adequate knowledge on using them.

By using the card, one can pay amount with a single swipe without paying extra to the boys. In fact, charges of the delivery boys are included in the cylinder bill and the consumers need not to pay any additional amount located within a radius of 6 km from the company stock point. Interestingly, still delivery boys are collecting Rs 30 from the consumers for delivering the cylinder.

But, even for the house located just close to the gas godown, dealers are collecting delivery charges of Rs 30. As per the programme of the gas companies, the smart cards that are similar to an ATM card will be issued and the delivery boy, who brings the cylinder to the household carry a swiping machine for collecting gas charges.

When the card is swiped, exact cost of the cylinder would be deducted from the consumer’s bank account. Even though, crores of rupees have been collected from the consumers there has been no use with these cards since the gas dealers are still following old pattern of collection of cost and delivery charges by hard cash. No one is brining swiping machines. “We have collected only mandatory inspection charges of Rs 150 from each consumer and it was only Rs 20 for issuing the card.

There is no question of collecting additional amount from the consumers for issuing the smart card,” said an employee from Subha Gas Agency located in Vedayapalem area. But, he denied response on their representative, who collected the huge amount for issuing the card as the printed receipt was from the same agency. He simply said the gas company might have engaged a team of private people for conducting the inspections. “They simply said they would be issuing cards and collected Rs 150 from us in November.

If it was a mandatory inspection, at least they should have inspected the stove, cylinder, regulator, documents and others for authenticity. But, they had not done it which indicates that they had collected the amount throwing dust on the faces of the consumers,” said D Bharathi, a housewife from Police Colony area located in Dargamitta.

There are 1.71 lakh Deepam connections, 4.73 lakh general connections, 18,000 connections under CSR programmes and 5,100 gas connections under Ujjwala Yojana in the entire district comes to more than 6.5 lakh connections. A senior official said he was not aware of additional money being collected by gas dealers.

By P V Prasad