Cylinder crisis shoots up cooking gas rates

GUWAHATI: Though the city is reeling under an acute crisis of cooking gas cylinders for the last several weeks, the black market here presents a different scenario. The black market is providing cooking gas cylinders to people willing to pay over Rs 1,000 for it, even as the authorized cooking gas agencies of the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) in the city say that there are not enough cylinders to meet the demand of the people.
Taking advantage of the crisis situation, some of the cooking gas agencies in the city have joined hands with unauthorized persons to sell gas cylinders for Rs 800 to Rs 1600 in the city.
A local resident of ABC locality in Guwahati said, "There is a cooking gas cylinder in the city, but I have bought a cylinder at Rs 1,600 from the black market. The agencies must be providing gas cylinders to the black market as the IOC does not directly sell cooking gas cylinders to unauthorized persons."
An IOC official said there is no scope of buying cooking gas cylinders in unauthorized way from the IOC. "IOC sells cooking gas through authorized agencies. Leakage to the black market may be through some of the gas agencies," the official said.
An employee of Sivam Gas Service, a leading cooking gas agency in Maligaon said they are not being able to provide gas cylinders to the customers who booked gas cylinders in their agency two weeks ago. "Normally, we provide cooking gas within seven days from the date of booking. But on Saturday, we were distributing cooking gas to customers, who had booked cylinders on April 15 and April 16," said Rubul Choudhury, accountant of Sivam Gas Service.
Jayanta Madhav, chief area manager of IOC Guwahati, said the cooking gas cylinders' crisis in the city and other parts of the northeast, is likely to be resorted to normalcy by June. "There is shortage of cooking gas in other parts of the country too. The crisis in the northeast is due to the shortage of bulk LPG that is imported from the Haldia refinery of IOC. The explosion at the Numaligarh Refinery Limited on the Ulfa raising day on April 7 has compounded to the problem further," Madhav said.