Dhabas with heavy footfall face heat of LPG crisis

Bathinda: As supplies to customers using commercial LPG cylinders have been put on hold, it has started impacting hotels and restaurants in Punjab's Malwa region. Dhabas with a big footfall fear losing clients if supplies are not restored at the earliest. A number of such eateries situated along the Bathinda-Chandigarh National Highway, which get hundreds of customers everyday, are facing difficulty in looking for alternative arrangements, including biogas, diesel, or kerosene. Although the supplies were stopped on March 7, some distributors had reserve supplies and continued to provide them to the customers, but the same exhausted on March 9.

A large eatery close to the national highway in Barnala, which consumed 25-30 commercial cylinders (weighing 19 kg) on a daily basis, is looking for alternatives. LPG distributors have completely stopped supplies until the situation normalises. A number of commuters travelling on the Bathinda-Chandigarh National Highway thronged the eating place, even as it was nearly 100 metres off the highway.


"We are working out the alternatives as the LPG supplies stopped. We are taking care of clean energy sources. We are curtailing the cooking hours for customers, as previously we provided meals (both lunch and dinner) until late hours, but now we are not preferring customers at late hours, and if the situation persists, we may suffer in more ways, as the entire hospitality sector is set to face the impact," said an employee of the eatery.

A paying guest facility at Bathinda has asked the boarders to look for alternative arrangements, or they could simply stay in the room without food, as the PG owner stopped preparing food and looked for alternative arrangements.

A couple of migrant workers selling junk food and snacks in Barnala have turned to selling vegetables after failing to get refills of LPG cylinders. "My LPG cylinder was exhausted on March 9, and I failed to get a refill. After waiting for a couple of days, I turned to the vegetable market and purchased vegetables to sell on the streets," said Shyama Prasad from Pilibhit in UP. He said one of his colleagues has also stopped selling ‘momos' for the time being.

The impact was not only limited to supplies for commercial purposes, but it also caused harassment to individual customers. Those fearing shortages turned to LPG dealers in big numbers. Due to this, the servers of LPG companies, including Indian Oil, Hindustan Petroleum, and Bharat Petroleum, went down for a couple of days.

The companies have also extended the booking time from 15 days to 21 days for customers who have only one cylinder, and 30 days for customers who have twin cylinders in their names. This online booking has also increased anxiety, as after the customers failed to book cylinders before the extended periods, they thronged the dealers, sometimes turning into heated exchanges as they blamed the dealers for the delay. The dealers, on their part, explained that everything was centralised and they had nothing to do with sending OTPs or extending the time for booking, but they were asked not to provide supplies without getting the OTP to avoid misuse, said Barnala-based HPCL dealer Rajesh Kansil.