As many as 75 cooking gas distributors in Ernakulam district will join a token strike on Tuesday in protest against the reported failure of the police to arrest those accused of assaulting the owner of an LPG distribution agency at Kuzhuppilly, Vypeen, and her family members on October 25. The distributors alleged in a statement here that a group of Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) leaders was behind the assault.
The distributors said though a first information report (FIR) was registered, the culprits were still at large. “If such incidents can happen with one distributor, it is possible that others too could be victimised,” said Babu Joseph K., convenor of LPG Distributors’ Coordination Committee. The committee comprises several unions of LPG distributors.
The distributors, serving all the three public sector oil companies — IOC, HPC, and BPCL — alleged that the CITU leadership had assumed an arrogant and threatening position on the issue raised by them.
The LPG dealers said they would neither open distributorships nor unload cylinders at godowns. There will be no supply of cylinders, and “we will not place our trucks for LPG loading in the respective plants on that day,” said the committee.
The 75 distributors supply 400 gas cylinders per agency on an average a day, and the agencies are confident that the backlog on the day of the token strike can be cleared in a week.
