BENGALURU: Food and Civil Supplies Minister K H Muniyappa told the Karnataka Legislative Council that only 9,000 commercial LPG cylinders were available in the state for distribution, where the daily requirement is over 44,000 every day.
Providing an update on the status of the cylinder availability in the Karnataka Legislative Council on Wednesday, Muniyappa said, “There is no problem with the domestic cylinder supply. Daily requirement of 3,52,921 domestic cylinders is taken care of by oil companies, including Indian Oil.”
“While we need 44,000 commercial cylinders daily, the union government said that only 20 per cent can be supplied, which is around 9,000 cylinders”, the Minister said and urged that hotel owners to run the show with electric stoves and other arrangements for the time being in the war-like situation and crisis. He said that 16 LPG tanker ships were in queue in Iran, and once they reach India, things will improve.
He said that the available commercial cylinders were supplied on priority. He said that 4,200 cylinders were supplied to hostels, hospitals, educational institutions and 1,200 to airports, railway stations, bus stands, state-run Indira Canteens and Nandini outlets.
“Around 500 cylinders are supplied to food processing industries, sports hostels, agriculture and allied industries”, he said.
“Only 1,000 cylinders are available for hotels. We will consolidate and increase them to around 15,000 and they would be supplied with the help of the hotel association”, Muniyappa said. He said that 50 per cent of the cylinder requirement of the Legislators House will be supplied till the Karnataka Assembly session ends.