CHENNAI: Much to the delight of officials, around 11,000 consumers turned up at the special Sunday camps set up at six different locations across Chennai by Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) to register for the Direct Benefit Transfer for LPG (DBTL) that is to be rolled out from January 1.
While the reception at the Nungambakkam head office IOC was ordinary, with only 800 turning up, staff at suburban centres like Chitalapakkam were kept busy with more than 5000 turning up. “We will conduct similar camps on Sundays till January 15,” U P Chattopadhyay DGM (LPG-Sales) of IOC told Express. People who couldn’t complete their registrations during weekdays at gas agencies or wished to avoid serpentine queues began arriving at the camp, which began at 10 am. While crowds withered at the IOC head office in Nungambakkam after 12 pm, the venue at Vyasarpadi was crowded till closing time at 3 pm. “I faced an error while registering online for DBTL. I visited the Nungambakkam camp, where the re-registration was completed within 5 minutes. This is an excellent initiative,” said N Ranganathan.
Indane has around 31 lakh consumers in the five districts of Chennai region of which 6 lakh have already seeded their Aadhar and/or bank accounts with their LPG accounts. The camp at the head office was neatly set-up with divisions for consumers with Aadhar and those without Aadhar.
Apart from these six locations, around 2500 forms were received at the village centres of Tiruvannamalai and Vellore district. The high turnout at suburban centres has buoyed the IOC officials, who plan to organise similar camps in other areas. “After analysing the data, we shall decide on the locations where seedings are low,” an official said.