Puttur: Oil Companies' Apathy Hits People, Police, Fire Brigade
Daijiworld Media Network – Puttur (SP)
Puttur, Dec 2: The repeated tumbling of gas tankers in the ghat section of the national highway between Mangalore and Bangalore, the latest of which occurred on Wednesday evening, and the fact that rescue operations did not begin till Thursday December 1 morning, has again brought to the fore the problem of non-cooperation of the oil companies in handling matters, which can prove to be disastrous.
The police and fire brigade personnel are on tenterhooks till the company officials come from Mangalore and begin their operations, and people get stranded and are forced to take a longer tour which means loss of hours on end. The companies have turned a deaf ear to repeated demands for setting up mobile rescue and relief units in the ghat section of the road.
File Photo
All through Wednesday night, buses moving between Mangalore and Bangalore had to take a detour via congested Gundia-Subrahmanya-Uppinangady Road. One of these buses hit power lines, and caused uprooting of two electric poles and damage to a house belonging to Qasim in Kemmara village. Loss in this incident has been put at one lac rupees. Passengers reached their homes with lot of delay. Luckily, no loss of lives occurred. A case was registered at traffic police station here against the bus driver.
When the buses are asked to move via alternative route, there is inordinate delay, and passengers happen to be the ultimate sufferers. At the same time, huge containers and trucks have to wait by the roadside for kilometers on end for approximately a day before they are allowed to move ahead. This causes criminal waste of time and money, which was also the case in the latest incident. All these could have been avoided, had the oil companies set up emergency management unit in the ghat section, where gas tankers have repeatedly fallen, thus giving rise to a state of emergency because of gas leakage.
Even the police and fire brigade personnel have to overlook their other exigencies and man the accident spot in a state of alert, till relief measures are undertaken by personnel of the companies located in Mangalore. For the people of the area where the tankers meet with accidents, the experience becomes nightmarish, as they spend time, hoping that the worst will not happen.
The demand of the people for setting up of mobile unit to handle emergencies and exigencies arising out of the gas tanker accidents have not been taken seriously by the oil companies. They do not seem to have taken into account the problems thousands of people encounter because of these incidents. In case where gas leakage occurs, timely action is of paramount importance, in the absence of which gas will evaporate, endangering the lives of people and property. Mobile squad alone can address the problem properly and provide relief to passengers who are made to suffer for the fault of oil companies, the people concerned stress.