Excelsior Correspondent

JAMMU, April 28: The Indian LPG Distributor Federation (NWR), which represents distributors in Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and Chandigarh, has screened its various issues including Distributor Commission review and MDG guidelines in a letter written to Hardeep Singh Puri (Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas).
Disclosing this at a press conference held here today, Federation President Verinder Kumar said that oil companies have not compensated distributors for rising costs over the past two years and half according to the formula agreed by the oil companies and MOPNG, the Federation asked the Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas to revise the commission of distributors because the delay in the revision of the commission leads to a drop in service standards. Click here to watch the video
He said that with the transformation of LPG from scarcity to plentiful commodity, the direct transfer of funds to the recipient, the free availability of LPG connections, many of the Disciplinary Marketing Guidelines (MDGs) introduced in 1982 have become redundant and irrelevant, and should be removed. It was also argued that monetary penalties should be abolished or that minimal and rational monetary penalties should be imposed.
“While there has been an orderly progression of domestic GPL trading through an integrated KYC-based database management system, paving the way for greater transparency through IVRS, digitization and authentication of delivery, there is little or no regulatory oversight in the non-domestic LPG sector with endemic duplication of non-domestic customers,” he alleged.
Considering these irregularities in the marketing of non-domestic LPG, Kumar said the Federation suggested to the minister the implementation of the KYC-based management system, the elimination of consumer rebates to stop the cross movement of customers, the deduplication of customers when registering non-domestic customers, limiting the scope of Bas to bulk industrial sales, fixing remuneration separately for Bas according to their scope of work and their quantum, making mandatory computerized and centralized invoicing of GST by oil companies for non-domestic LPG sales and ensuring 100% digitization of payments in the NDNE LPG trade.