Getting oil sector employees to give up their LPG subsidy 

Between the three of them, they have nearly 45,000 employees on their rolls. And it is to these people that BPCL, HPCL and IOC have reached out in an effort to reduce the cooking gas subsidy.

Following a suggestion from the petroleum ministry, the oil marketing trio has recently kicked off an exercise in requesting their employees to voluntarily surrender their subsidy on LPG cylinders. “It is not our intention to force anyone to give this up but the idea is to let them know that this gesture will contribute to a bigger national cause,” an oil company official told Business Line.

Nishi Vasudeva, Chairman and Managing Director of HPCL, gave up her subsidy over a year ago while S Varadarajan, her counterpart in BPCL, surrendered his too. The bigger task on hand for the companies is to get other employees to follow suit voluntarily and this is where their communication skills will be put to the test.

It is barely ten days since the internal communiqué was sent out by each of them and thus far nearly 70 employees in HPCL have responded favourably to this call. Indications are that the response has been pretty much on the same lines within BPCL and IOC. 

“Given the total workforce, these numbers may seem a drop in the ocean but we have just started and the challenge is to keep the momentum going. Even if 10 per cent, which is roughly 5,000 people, surrender their subsidy during the course of this year, it will be welcome,” the official said.

This is where leadership verticals in these companies will need to pull out all stops and convince their employees why this gesture will help the less privileged who desperately need cooking gas in their homes.

Senior officials agree that this is going to be a difficult task especially when inflation is hurting households and employees would be in no mood to make a sacrifice. “Yet, we must not give up and convince them that there are many others who are in dire straits,” an executive said.

At present, there are nearly 15 crore LPG connections across India and the subsidy extends to 12 cylinders per year. On an average, families use eight paying nearly Rs 450 per cylinder which, in turn, carries a subsidy of a little over Rs 500. 

For the oil companies, this results in an annual loss of around Rs 55,000 crore which they recover as part of a compensation mechanism from the Government and their upstream counterparts, ONGC and Oil India.

Clearly, the employees of IOC, BPCL and HPCL form a minuscule portion of the overall LPG customer base which explains why this exercise will have to reach a much wider audience. 

While ONGC and Oil India are perhaps already part of this drive, there is no reason why other companies, both in the public and private sector, should not send this message across to their own employees. The Government, in its turn, could then think of ways of getting the entire country on board.

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