LPG consumers in Tamil Nadu, where a vast majority do not speak Hindi, are finding it difficult to deal with emergencies as the all India LPG leak helpline — 1906 — is mostly attended to in Hindi.
Though there is an option to choose other languages when consumers call, it does not seem to work efficiently enough. “I had opted for a Tamil-speaking customer service executive when making the call but it landed only to someone who spoke in Hindi. She said she would transfer the call to a Tamil-speaking person. But I cut the call after waiting for 12 minutes. Luckily when I tried the owner of my gas agency, he answered the call and sent a mechanic. But this has become a regular headache for me,” said a customer from Thoraipakkam.
Chitlapakkam resident Madhavan Venkatesan said that a month ago he managed to register a complaint with his “broken Hindi” but since there was no follow up from the helpline, he called up the agency, which sent someone to change the O ring, a rubber washer at the mouth of the refill.
A distributor said that he receives around 20 leak calls a month via the helpline.
When the 1906 helpline was launched four years ago, it was expected to provide services in most regional languages. “Sometimes if a customer is lucky, they can get a Tamil speaking customer executive. But this does not seem to be possible during early mornings and late evenings, when most complaints land,” said a distributor.
Deficiency in service
Consumer activist T. Sadagopan said that oil companies can take leak complaints via WhatsApp too since the helpline doesn’t seem to work. “This only points to a deficiency in service. Consumers are not taking cylinders for free. Many of them do not even get subsidies. If a helpline does not speak in your mother tongue or a common language, it is useless. How will people convey the message,” he asked.
An oil industry official said since it was a pan-India helpline for the three State-run oil marketing companies, they could only request repeatedly for more regional language customer executives. “We are trying to set it right,” he said.
