Shortly after the hike of ₹25 for domestic cooking gas kicked in on Thursday, an autorickshaw driver approached a gas agency at Thripunithura for a cylinder. Unaware of the hike, he fell short of the revised price. Neither had he booked a cylinder as he had run out of mobile phone balance to even avail of the IVRS-based (Interactive Voice Response System) booking.
Moved by his plight, the gas agent made the booking on his behalf and delivered the cylinder at the old price.
The latest hike, the fifth since this February, has seen the price of a 14.2 kg cooking gas cylinder soaring from ₹701 in January this year to ₹841.50. The price rose by ₹100 in February alone as it was revised thrice.
“To make natters worse, since March 2020, the government has done away with the subsidy of around ₹200 to ₹250, which used to be directly credited to customers’ accounts within 10 days of the purchase. Coupled with the frequent fuel price hike, the nearly ₹150 hike in less than six months has made gas cylinder unaffordable to middle and lower middle class sections. Last month alone, our sales dipped by about 10%,” said the agent on condition of anonymity.
Customers from these sections not claiming the cylinder for want of money has become disturbingly common. “They return us and later give us a call for delivery when they have arranged the money. Cases in which booking gets cancelled for not taking the delivery within a fortnight of the generation of the invoice are also not rare. Such instances had increased since the COVID-19 pandemic and are likely to increase even further with the price hike,” said Libin Lal, a gas delivery boy.
Sympathetic gas agents sometimes let customers take the delivery of the cylinders on the promise to pay next time. Some of them even write off the shortage if it is less than ₹50.
“At this rate, it seems like people like me will have to return to firewood. Thankfully, I am staying alone and don’t have a family in which case I would have already done that,” said P.V. Babu, a lottery vendor.
Mano Mujeeb, a housewife at Kakkanad, looked at the gas price hike as a reflection of the insensitivity and callousness of the government. “People were already suffering from job loss and salary cuts and the least the government could have done was not to overburden them. Have they got any clue what this frequent fuel and gas price hike are doing to our family budgets,” she fumed.