Booking date-sometime in April or May. Delivery date-the present.
That is book one’s cooking gas four or five months back and get the delivery today.
This is how the present situation has unfolded and if one looks back to the UNC highway blockade days, then one may say that the State has come back full circle again.
The only difference is, there is no highway blockade or economic blockade today.
Yet shortage of cooking gas has hit every single household today, that is households which belong to the common people and it is the common people who make up more than 90 percent of the State’s population.
Granted nature played its part in the present cooking gas shortage and one just has to recollect the days when the highway was cut off for days following the heavy rains and the landslides at different points of the National Highways that connect Manipur to the rest of the country.
Moreover there were times when the two important bridges on the Imphal-Jiribam line were declared off limits for heavy loaded trucks and LPG bullet tankers obviously come under the heavily loaded trucks that traverse on the National Highways.
Moreover remember it was not only Manipur which was hit hard by the heavy rain but neighbouring States, Assam in particular and Assam being the gateway of the North East to the rest of the country, this meant that the only route connecting the region with the rest of the country was unstable.
All perfect conditions to jeopardise the free flow of cooking gas to the States that lie to the east of Assam.
In all probability, the cooking gas shortage may have also hit all the other North Eastern States too such as Nagaland, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya.
This is nature at work and there is nothing that one can do.
But however it also stands that while there is acute shortage of cooking gas at all the godowns of the gas agencies, the same is still available at the black market, of course at a huge price.
It is this which is hard to digest and gives rise to suspicion whether there is any underhand dealing among some enterprising individuals, who know how to milk the situation and convert the shortage period into a time to mint easy money.
So while there is practically no filled LPG cylinder with the gas agencies, the same is available in the black market with one filled LPG cylinder shooting up to Rs 2000 or so.
The question is from where have these filled gas cylinders come ?
Are the LPG consumers in the hill districts rightly receiving their share of the same ?
Are the agencies based in the hill districts supplying the same to the consumers ?
These are all questions which need to be asked.
Are all the hill based gas agencies announcing the availability of the cooking gas through the newspapers published in Imphal ?
Or do they rely on the newspapers published in the hill districts ?
Moreover are there newspapers published in all the hill districts headquarters ?
In this time of shortage, it is good to see that the State Government has taken steps to arrange extra convoys to face the shortage of cooking gas.
Moreover it is important that all extend their hand of cooperation to the steps taken up by the Government and the IOC.
Source: The Sangai Express
