Consumers see no reason to keep ‘dimming gas’ connection after price hike

Residents in different areas in the capital, who are using gas cylinders for cooking due to the scarcity of supply through the pipeline, now see no reason to keep the gas connections after a more than 50 percent hike in prices.

Many of them have asked on the Facebook how many months it will take to get the line disconnected after they stop paying bills.

Residents of Shyamoli, Mohammadpur, Mirpur, Agargaon, Taltala and Shukrabad have alleged regular gas crisis as the flow is so weak that they could hardly cook anything.

Sadia Jahan, a housewife, living in Shyamoli, said she is not getting uninterrupted gas for past three years. "I can't cook a single meal properly," she told bdnews24.com.

"We do not have uninterrupted gas, not even in a single span of five straight days since we got the connection in 2013, but the price has been raised twice in this period," she said.

Amidst the crisis at households and factories, the government announced on Thursday that gas prices would be raised by over 22 percent on average in two phases in March and June.

The domestic consumers are hit most by the hike as the household gas charge for a single burner stove will be Tk 750 from Mar 1 and Tk 800 for a double burner, up from the current Tk 600 and Tk 650 respectively.

In the second phase from Jun 1, the monthly charge for a single burner stove will be Tk 900 and for a double burner stove Tk 950.

Those, who pay the gas bills for household use through meters, will have to pay Tk 9.1 per cubic metre from March and Tk 11.2 from June. They currently pay Tk 7 per cubic metre.

Undated file photo shows a woman cooking with a mud stove in the capital as there is no gas.

It means that stove-based charges are rising by 50 percent while meter-based gas cost will go up 60 percent.

Sadia said she sees no reason to pay this much money for the gas which is not sufficient to meet the family need.

She said the pressure of gas starts to decrease early in the morning and the flow completely stops at one stage. It returns for around three hours at 4pm. After another interruption of three hours, it comes back again at 10pm, but the pressure is not sufficient for cooking.

"We have no interest to keep the government gas connection anymore," she said.

According to her, the residents of the area use induction oven, electric heater and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) cylinders for cooking.

East Rampura's Ahsanul Haque said the households in the area get gas from 11pm to 5am, but not during the day. "We use cylinder gas," he said.

'Salahuddin' from Adabor said the stoves in the area remain ‘dimmed’ until 2pm from the morning. "We can't start cooking before 2:30pm."

Tahmina Sultana Sumi from Adabor's Baitul Aman Housing Society said the pressure of gas drops after 11am for an hour on weekdays while for one or two more hours on Friday.

'Fahmida' from Mohammadpur's Noorjahan Road said: "No gas from morning to noon. When we get it, the pressure is not enough for cooking.

Debashish Deb from Basabo, Sazia Afrin from Shahjahanpur, and residents of Sobhanbagh Colony and some parts of Shukrabad complained the same.

Abu Bakr Riyad of Mirpur Section-2 said the crisis was not severe in his area, but gas vanishes for some hours without any notice.

State-run gas firm Titas, however, admits there is a crisis of gas, but officials have claimed it is at a tolerable stage.

Titas Director HM Ali Ashraf told bdnews24.com the company cannot supply gas uninterrupted to households due to the demand of fertiliser firms.

"But overall, the situation is at a tolerable state now. The crisis which occurred in the winter is getting normal," he said.