Surat Diary-5
Ratlam or Indore in Madhya Pradesh or Jullundhar in Punjab, Ernakulam in Kerala, or Ahmedabad in Gujarat, one can declare that Indian Oil pays attention to drivers serving them. They care.
Oil marketing companies — Indian Oil, BPCL, HPCL, and others — are the biggest users of trucks. Like any other business enterprise, these companies opted for outsourcing their transport needs. Products they distribute are humungous: diesel, petrol, aviation turbine fuel, bitumen, cooking gas cylinders, etc.
Catering to these requirements is perpetual. The question of shutting down refineries or bottling plants, or feeding petrol pumps across the country is unthinkable. All this translates into the deployment of trucks of various payload capacities daily.
It presupposes a huge parking yard for trucks. What about the drivers of these vehicles? Where do they wait for the load? They wait for maybe a few hours or a day even. Though drivers are used to living their lives inside their cabins, they need a good resting area: for sitting and lying down. Not to be ignored is their food requirement.
Given the environmental considerations, most of these depots, refineries, or bottling plants are situated mostly on the outskirts of towns. Since cooking in the parking yards is not permitted and in the absence of dhabas in the vicinity in some places is a cause for concern. Empty stomachs are inadvisable: working or resting.
In this age of outsourcing, manufacturers depend totally on contracted trucks for inbound and outbound movement of raw materials and finished products. The number of companies that paid attention to creating proper driver restroom facilities outside their factory gates is negligible. In the bargain, trucks are parked on the periphery of factories or warehouses, or the lips of highways/roads close by to while away time and wait for the call to enter the factory gates for the load.
The absence of restrooms outside factory gates leads to soil pollution through open defecation by truck drivers in the surrounding areas, thus nullifying the government’s Swatch Bharat Andolan.
Therefore, it was satisfying to notice the oil marketing companies and Indian Oil, particularly creating driver restrooms with the basic amenities for waiting drivers at their operation centers. A canteen facility is also available.
Nonetheless, some issues need to be addressed. Upkeep and maintenance of such driver restrooms — particularly the toilets — is also the responsibility of users, viz., drivers. Toilets, after usage, remain unflushed. Remnants of beedi/cigarette and empty pouches of tobacco consumed inside toilets accumulate.
Basic hygienic habits are to be imparted to drivers regularly. Good surroundings translate into good health. Sickness again results in earning loss plus prohibitive medical expenses.
It is worthwhile for logistics managers both in private and public sector enterprises to give importance to educating their drivers on proper dieting patterns: affordable food that would sate their hunger and keep them healthy.
