As hundreds of migrant labourers are fleeing cities amidst the lockdown, national oil marketing companies are providing them succour by providing food and water as well as first aid at their fuel retail outlets.
Besides, these companies are also making food packets, water and first aid facility available on major roads and national highways where petrol pumps are far and few. Truckers who are returning to their native places are also taken care of, according to officials.
While BPCL and HPCL have been doing this "humane service" on their own since the announcement of the national lockdown, Indian Oil Corporation has been doing it since Saturday, when there was a nudge from the oil ministry.
On Wednesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a 21-day lockdown as part of efforts to curb spreading of coronavirus infections.
Giving details of how HPCL is going about helping the needy, the company's Chairman and Managing Director Mukesh Kumar Surana told PTI that it started serving the needy people on the road and also the truckers soon after the lockdown was announced.
On whether the company will reimburse the expenses to dealers, he said it was the dealers who broached the idea first and volunteered to come forward.
"Of course, if some of them want reimbursement given the steeply falling fuel sales, we will definitely pay them back," he noted.
Similar is the way how BPCL also started it. Apart from feeding the poor, it has been serving food and water to the stranded truck drivers and cleaners through their retail outlets across the country, a company official said.
An IOC official told PTI on Monday that a detailed note was sent to its state-level managers of retail operations on March 28.
"Indian Oil has decided to offer assistance to these needy people at the retail outlets. Accordingly, it has been decided that the local authority must be contacted first by field officer/ divisional office on the initiative to serve food/ water to these people," the note said.
Initially, 20 retail outlets per regional offices will carry out the services of providing food and water.
IOC, which controls more than half of the oil retailing market in terms of volume as well as in terms of the number of filling stations, has asked its officers in Maharashtra to ensure that each retail outlet has adequate provision for sanitisers.
There should also be provision for soaps and masks apart from some first aid medicine like Dettol and bandages, the note said.
IOC has also said the dealers can maintain manual registers for keeping record of the number of people served on a daily basis so that they can claim 50 per cent reimbursement subject to a maximum of Rs 25,000 per month per outlet on a regular basis.
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