Dimapur, Oct 17 (MExN): The LPG crisis is affecting domestic households as well as commercial establishments in Nagaland. The actual problem which had begun in the first week of the month has become acute. The long endless waiting in queues at the refill counters has proved the alarming shortage of LPG.
The crisis had hit the domestic households intensely. Even as the central government has called for more imports of cooking gas (liquefied petroleum gas) to tide over the current crisis, households undergo difficulties and are unable to meet the daily household chores.
“Some of us here have been standing in the queue since 5 am and still have not got our turn. Before we could issue two cylinders with one card but now only one cylinder is allotted per card. I still have not cooked for my children from school since there was no gas”, laments a housewife. Due to the shortage, only one cylinder is issued in a month to the cardholders.
Another housewife, who gets her cylinder from an agency at Circular Road counter, says the usual waiting time was three or four days but now it is over 10 days, and she has been told to wait longer. Like many other homemaker, she may have to settle for firewood which is also another difficulty. “Even in Dimapur, many people are staying in a flat without a fireplace in the kitchen. We cannot help it but wait as long as needed to collect the LPG cylinder”, Ajungla, a resident of Circular Road area said.
A source from one of the agencies in Dimapur disclosed that due to the scarcity crisis, the proprietors are not in a position to give away the entire truck loads that arrives. “If all the cylinders are distributed in a day, the outlet will be closed for days in which the public will surely retaliate”, said the source.
However, the number of cylinders that arrived today were in a larger quantity. By 1 pm, more than 700 cylinders were distributed. “It usually closes down at 12:30 but since there is still a long queue, we are continuing the distribution. We are allotted only 33 trucks per month which is not enough to distribute on a daily basis”, informed the in-charge of one of the agencies. He also further said that the commercial establishments are also facing an acute shortage as they need more cooking gas than the domestic households. It may be mentioned here that a 14.2 kg domestic LPG cylinder retails for around Rs 300, a 15 kg for a costs of 315 and a 19 kg cylinder for the commercial sector costs Rs 770. It may be mentioned that the country-wide crisis is expected to continue till the month of November.
At present, the entire country is facing one of its worst LPG shortages in recent times and consumers even have to pay more than Rs 200 extra for a cylinder in the black market. But the country’s LPG problems are unlikely to be solved unless the government finds ways to tackle the subsidy burden faced by India’s Oil Marketing Companies(OMC). The Centre has maintained that distributors have been given LPG supplies based on a calculation that each household uses one cylinder every 40 days.
The state-owned oil marketing companies (OMCs) Hindustan Petroleum (HPCL), Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) and Bharat Petroleum (BPCL) are monitoring their supplies. For long, all the OMCs have seen their distributors divert supplies of LPG cylinders from the domestic to the commercial sector. The domestic sector accounts for 95% of the total 8.5 million tonne LPG sales in India.
