Heavy rush to link Aadhaar cards to gas connections in Canacona

THE GOAN NETWORK

CANACONA

For about a fortnight, people have been rushing to the lone Hindustan Petroleum (HP) distributor in Canacona to comply with the mandatory eKYC to link Aadhaar Cards to gas connections to avail a gas cylinder.

As people struggled to complete the eKYC on account of portal/server issues at the HP dealer ‘Prabhudessai Gas Service’ in Chaudi-Canacona, a visibly upset Congress leader Janardhan Bhandari confronted the HP Gas Sales Manager at the site.

Bhandari stated that the HP gas company and distributor should continue providing gas cylinders as was previously provided and not insist on eKYC completion and mobile–booking till the queues are properly resolved.

Bhandari demanded that teams from the gas company/distributor should be deputed to each of the seven village panchayat areas of Canacona taluka, to bring about awareness among people regarding the eKYC procedures.

“Not everyone reads papers and not every mobile holder particularly from rural areas is literate enough to comply with the new gas policy of eKYC and booking of gas cylinder on mobile phone. You must bring about awareness among people in all villages,” said Bhandari.

The Congress leader gave the distributor till Thursday to decide, but insisted that the existing system should continue and that the public should not be troubled till the eKYC process is resolved.

Incidentally, Canacona taluka has over 18,000 gas connections which are serviced by a lone LPG company Hindustan Petroleum Gas, which has a sole distributor, Prabhudessai Gas Service at Chaudi.

The gas company has made it mandatory to link Aadhaar card to gas connections, and the new system has been implemented a month ago in Canacona where the distributor has been issuing gas cylinders only to those consumers who book cylinders via an IVR system (mobile call).

The system, however, accepts bookings only from those consumers who have linked their Aadhaar cards to their gas connections.

Online issues hindered linking of Aadhaar cards: Dealer

CANACONA: Prabhudessai Gas Service proprietor Pradeep Prabhudessai has said that he had put two people exclusively to process the eKYC requirement.

“However, frequent breakdowns in the online system (portal/server) have led to long queues of consumers,” said Prabhudessai.

HP Gas Company Sales Manager Nikhil Warker informed the agitated people that the company had advertised about the mandatory eKYC a long time ago and it was implemented only much later.

HP representatives, however, assured that in the next few days, a campaign would be started to link Aadhaar cards in all panchayats.