The number ‘1906’ is a call-centre based service, available nationally to all liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) customers of the three public sector oil marketing companies (OMCs).
The centralised Emergency Service Cell (ESC) is operational through a call centre, which would operate 24x7 to attend to LPG leakage calls. The helpline offers services in nine vernacular languages — Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, Oriya, Assamese, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam — apart from Hindi and English, to ensure that callers are comfortable in registering their grievances.
The call center is also equipped with a set-up for outbound calls for contacting mechanics, distributors and oil company officials. Although customers can access the Emergency Service Cell only through voice calls, the call centre is equipped with a web-based application for logging and viewing complaints.
The portal houses exhaustive data on contact details of all LPG distributors, emergency service mechanics and field officers across the OMCs. LPG area in-charges of the three OMCs have been provided access to the portal to constantly monitor call logs and update contact details of the mechanics and field officers on a regular basis.
Pradhan said that the initiatives taken by the Petroleum Ministry in 2015 have enhanced coverage of LPG and extended better services to customers. “The policy initiatives implemented by the Union Government in the LPG sector have brought a paradigm shift in LPG marketing and have taken us closer to the target of achieving 70 per cent LPG penetration as envisioned by our Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi,” he added.
The expansion of PAHAL, a scheme aimed to improve subsidy administration of LPG across the country, has ensured smooth transfer of subsidy on LPG cylinders directly to customers’ bank accounts. Pradhan pointed out that a host of other such initiatives for customer convenience would be offered and that the year 2016 would be celebrated as the ‘Year of the LPG consumer.’