A day after commoners came out in the open all over the country and showered venoms for raising the price of diesel by Rs 5.62, now the target for all this is the Union Government who has restricted the supply of cylinders to 6 in a year to domestic householders.
Many householders said that six domestic cylinders in a year is unacceptable since that will depend on the number of persons in a family.
A housewife Kamla Gurung from Polo said that there are six members in her family including her in-laws and she needs one to two cylinders in a month. “I need 12 cylinders in a year and if that is reduced to 6, it is indeed uncalled for. The ministers and i are looting the taxpayer’s money and the commoners are left to counter the losses,” she said.
Another such housewife Bano Haque from Laban said that fuel consumption actually goes up during the winter months.
“During the winter season, a cylinder lasts up to 20 days in my case whereas it lasts for more than a month in the summer months,” said the housewife with four family members. Now it is pretty obvious that the days of heating water atop a pile of burning charcoal is over.
Mohit Rajendran, a government employee said that cylinders should be allotted on the basis of the number of members in a family. “The government cannot kill the commoners with such rules they should rather advise the gas agencies to allot cylinders on the basis of members in a family,” he said.
Echoing him Ramdeo Singh working in a courier company said that this is a good idea since a bigger family will need more cylinders than a smaller family. “Six cylinders means a family has to live on a cylinder for two months. Has the minister really studied the family pattern in the country before imposing such a restriction on the consumers,” he retorted.
A bank employee, Dhiren Burman observed that the rationing of cylinder will give rise to black marketing and the commoners will again be hit by this menace which is rampant in the state.
He said that the FDI in multi-brand retail is nothing but to fill the coffer of the politicians at the expense of the farmer and manufacturers in the country.
“The country is passing through a very difficult phase created by the congress politicians since they have literally sold the country to outsiders,” he alerted.
A messenger of a certain government department said that he has a family with four children and the new restriction is going to hit them hard if it is not rolled back.
“There is no restriction for the ministers and their accomplices whereas every restriction is for people like us,” he said.
(By Rajib Roy)