The city's taxi's and auto-rickshaws have been getting rich gas or Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) instead of Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) at the stations run by Mahanagar Gas Limited (MGL). This is the impact of fire that engulfed ONGC plant in Uran couple of days ago which sadly also killed four people.
In the past two days, the auto and cab drivers have been claiming that they are not receiving lean gas which is CNG at the gas stations. Instead the vehicle tanks are being filled with rich gas or LPG. This has also been informed to the taxi and auto-rickshaw unions. Due to this there are technical hitches like slow downs or even shuts the engine while the vehicle is on the move.
"When the auto or taxi slows down, there is hissing in the tank and there are frequent jerks that the vehicle undergoes. At times the engine also shuts down in the middle of the road and the driver has to restart it. The driver has to keep parking lights on to keep other motorists aware that there are some issues with his vehicle," said an auto-rickshaw union member.
This could be dangerous on highways where the vehicles come at high speed. "We have received complaints from the drivers about this issue. We have been informed that enquiries on the incident are going on and so it will take some time before CNG supply will be normalised," said AL Quadros, senior taxi union leader.
On Tuesday there was a massive blaze inside the ONGC plant at Uran which, hit gas supply.