NOIDA: The ongoing crisis of oxygen cylinders is due to a sudden spurt in demand and also a shortage of key com-ponents like nozzles, pipes and masks, dealers in the city have said.
Following an appeal from the government, many suppliers have now diverted industrial oxygen orders for medical use to cater to Covid patients.
“It is not that there is no oxygen in supply in Noida and Ghaziabad. There are multiple plants in both cities. But there is a lot of pressure on suppliers. The manufacturing process is on, but for us, who supply oxygen for medical use, we do not have enough fittings to go with the cylinders. Kits like nozzles and masks are manufactured separately by medical accessory makers and those are in short supply. As a result of which bottlenecks are being created. We are refilling as many cylinders as possible but the demand has shot up exponentially over the past one week,” said DK Mittal, one of the main dealers in Noida who regularly supplies oxygen to hospitals across the city.
Noida has one large oxygen plant and several small manufacturers while Ghaziabad has over 15. Together, the areas are considered as one of the largest oxygen manufacturing hubs in Uttar Pradesh.
On Sunday night, Gautam Budh Nagar district magistrate Suhas LY held an emergency meeting with representatives of micro, small and medium-scale industries to discuss the current situation. He also urged them to step forward and help out with supply process.
“Ghaziabad has a couple of large manufacturers and Gautam Budh Nagar has one. But the supply is not exclusively for this region. Technically, we can’t say that we are short on oxygen supply. But the fact is that the demand has shot up by about 10 folds in the past few days and this can’t be matched overnight. I have appealed to all MSMEs to cooperate with us in this situation,” the DM said.
According to Mittal, several manufacturers have claimed that they have diverted all industrial orders for oxygen to cater to Covid-19 patients. “But even then, there is shortage because the oxyg-en level of many Covid patients is dropping to about 70-75 and in such cases, sometimes more than two cylinders are needed per patient, per day,” Mittal said.
Asked about the crisis, Rajiv Bansal, national secretary, Indian Industries Association (IIA), said: “We have offered full support to the district magistrate and several people have come forward to direct industrial orders to hospitals.”
According to Surender Singh Nahata, the district president, MSME Industrial Association, Noida, most dealers are struggling to cope with the sudden spike in demand.
Meanwhile in Greater Noida, some oxygen suppliers have said that getting their cylinders refilled has become a problem. “We went with empty cylinders to a manufacturer in Ghaziabad on Monday, but the factory refused to fill up our cylinders,” said Irfan, a Greater Noida-based oxygen supplier.