Guwahati, October 17 (PTI): The Centre's flagship scheme Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) has not only provided clean fuel to poor households, but also entailed an investment of over Rs 3,000 crore in the northeast, a senior official has said.
It has created more than 3,000 jobs in the region during the last two-and-half years as well, he said.
The ambitious programme, being implemented by the three PSU oil marketing companies IOCL, HPCL and BPCL, has increased the LPG customer base to over 94 lakh in October 2019 from 48.3 lakh on April 30, 2017, the official said.
The PMUY was rolled out on May 1, 2017 in the northeast, a year after the scheme was set in motion first in Uttar Pradesh.
The State Level Coordinator for Assam (Petroleum Products) Uttiya Bhattacharyya said that the LPG penetration in the region has gone up to nearly 90 per cent from 48 per cent two years ago.
"The social objective of the PMUY to make the cleaner fuel available to households was achieved. But beyond that, it has made a tremendous impact in the region in terms of investment, job creation, women empowerment and boosting the rural sector," Bhattacharyya told PTI in an interview here.
The PSU major Indian Oil Corporation has already ramped up its capacity at six bottling plants at a cost of Rs 149 crore while it is investing over Rs 290 crore to set up two greenfield plants at Agartala in Tripura and Barapani in Meghalaya by 2020, he said.
Bhattacharyya, who is also the Indian Oil Corporation Chief General Manager (IndianOil-AOD), said that the company has invested more than Rs 2,500 crore to upgrade the technology at its Bongaigaon refinery in Assam to meet the rise in demand.
The public sector undertaking Indian Oil Corporation currently has 10 LPG bottling plants across the northeast and these are functioning at 100 per cent utilisation. On job creation, Bhattacharyya said the entire LPG business engages huge manpower at various levels such as production in bottling plants, sales offices, distribution network, delivery of cylinders at households, distributor mechanics and transportation among others.
"All put together, there are over 22,500 people engaged in the LPG business in the northeast as of today. The number has grown from 19,500 during May 2017, when we had launched the PMUY," he said.
Besides, a large number of social groups, students and health workers were engaged in identification and enrolment of the beneficiaries, and the programme helped the people for more income generation, Bhattacharyya said.
Highlighting another important aspect, the senior IOC official said that the future of the company's LPG business lies in the rural market only as the cities will be connected by piped gas in the next few years.
