Cooking gas delivery boys have planned to give up their voters Id cards and Aadhaar cards on March 29 demanding that delivery persons, who were sacked by a couple of distributors be reinstated and action taken on the agencies.
Office-bearers of the Tamil Nadu LPG Gas Delivery Boys Welfare Association said that the delivery men were unnecessarily sacked and not taken back despite an assurance given by the distributors to the labour department.
“These men are not paid proper salaries. Complaints have been sent to the respective oil companies but all they do is levy fines, which does not seem to affect the distributors. We demand proper action against errant agencies that do not pay salaries but tell delivery boys to manage with the money collected from customers,” claimed one delivery person. He also said that the boys were planning to take leave en masse on that day.
Oil industry sources however refuted the charges and said that they had taken action as per their guidelines. “There were complaints that these men were harassing customers demanding additional money, which in some cases was as high as ₹100 per cylinder. The distributors had no other option but to sack them since it was giving the agency a bad name. However, a few of them have been reinstated after promising to behave properly,” said a source.
A former official however said that oil companies can interfere in the matter only to a certain level since they dealt only with distributors. “They have no say in who is being employed or how much they are being paid. They can only request the distributors to pay the men properly. There are delivery boys who harass distributors too,” he said.
