Food stalls, hotels feel the heat as commercial LPG crisis continues

Bhubaneswar: For the past two weeks, N Raju Reddy’s day begins not with the clatter of utensils or the aroma of piping hot ‘puris’ and ‘aloo tarkari’, but with uncertainty. The small tiffin stall he ran near a busy street in Laxmisagar in Bhubaneswar has remained shut as he struggles to cope with the ongoing commercial LPG crisis.Reddy, who depended on daily earnings to support his family of four, says the rising cost and unavailability of commercial LPG cylinders have pushed him to the brink. “I cannot afford a cylinder at Rs 2,500. Switching to firewood was also not an option because this is a rented space and the shop owner will not agree. So, I had to shut the shop,” he said. Reddy is not alone, and it is not just modest tiffin stalls that are hit by the ongoing commercial LPG crisis.A multi-cuisine restaurant at Mahatab Road in Cuttack has remained shut for the past five days, leaving its 50-odd employees, comprising cooks, helpers and cleaners, without work. All of them have returned to their villages in Kendrapara district with a small part of their wages, uncertain about when the kitchen will resume operations. “Business has always been high for us, but there is no LPG to run the kitchen even with a curtailed menu now. It is not just business owners who are facing losses but even for workers like us, it is a temporary loss of livelihood,” Manas Puhan, a cook in the restaurant, said. Here too, shifting to coal or firewood is not an option as it is a rented space.Although food supplies and consumer welfare minister Krushna Chandra Patra recently assured that hotels and restaurants would receive 40% of the commercial LPG quota, stakeholders said the relief is too little to ease the crisis. Odisha LPG Distributors Association’s president Biswanath Mukherjee admitted the crisis of commercial cylinders. “There is no problem with domestic LPG supply, the real issue lies with commercial cylinders. Under the current arrangement, hotel and restaurant owners will submit an application to the civil supplies officer on their requirement of a commercial LPG cylinder and only after the latter’s approval will they be allotted a part of their requirement. But that is a drop in the ocean,” he said.While some larger establishments have managed to stay afloat by switching to alternative cooking methods such as diesel burners, commercial inductions, steam-based kitchens or bulk fuel arrangements, such options remain out of reach for standalone restaurants, hotels and even smaller vendors who operate on thin margins and limited infrastructure.Even for those depending on coal and firewood, the price of the alternative fuel has increased in both Cuttack and Bhubaneswar. While a 20 kg bag of coal is now selling at Rs 150 as against Rs 50-Rs 70 till last month, firewood is now expensive at Rs 1,800 a quintal. It was around Rs 1,200 earlier.