March 5: If you have booked an LPG cylinder with your gas agency, there are chances you may get less gas against the prescribed weight of 14.2kg for a domestic cylinder and 19kg for commercial use.

Chances are that the delivery boy may not check the weight of a cylinder in front of you using the weighing equipment verified by the legal metrology department, which is mandatory.

Inspection by legal metrology department (Kamrup) has found three gas agencies in the city not using weight-measurement equipment which is a violation of Legal Metrology Act, 2009. The department registered three cases in the past year and two agencies have been fined Rs 10,000 each for violating Section 30 of the act. “We registered the first case against a gas agency at Hatigarh Chariali in July as we found them not using the weighing instrument. According to norms, a gas agency must use the equipment and the delivery boy must check the weight of the cylinder in front of consumers. Later, we registered cases against two other agencies — one at Chatribari and another at Bamunimaidam in November,” assistant controller of the department (Kamrup), Devajit Borah, told this correspondent today.

The office looks after the Kamrup (metro) and Kamrup districts.

The office wrote a letter to Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) in March last year informing that all gas agencies must provide weighing equipment to all gas delivery vans and accordingly the IOC had informed all gas agencies to comply with the norms and ensure that the consumers receive proper quantity of gas.

“It has been found that most of the delivery men of LPG distributors do not carry weighing instruments with them while delivering gas cylinders to the consumers. Every delivery boy should carry a duly verified and stamped weighing instrument to weigh the cylinder in front of consumer to ascertain the net content,” the letter said.

Ajoy Hazarika, the chief coordinator of Consumer Legal Protection Forum, a city-based NGO, said they had received complaints of delivery vans not using the machine, raising fears that the consumers were getting less than required quantity of gas.

“As the metrology department has found three agencies flouting the norms, we suspect that the consumers are getting less quantity of gas as neither the delivery boys check the weight in front of them nor the consumers ask them to do so,” Hazarika said.

Borah said inspections carried out by the department had found business establishments flouting weight and packaging norms.

“We have registered cases for not printing the price on a bread packet, increasing the price by affixing extra stickers over the original printed price and even some unscrupulous traders making duplicate packets of popular brands and selling them in the market. According to norms, weighing machines in all hospitals and nursing homes should be verified and renewed with us but no one seems interested,” Borah said.