LPG shortage likely to get more acute
Source: The Sangai Express
Imphal, October 08 2018:
People in the State are currently facing shortage of LPG supply due to inadequate transportation and the situation is likely to grow worse as the number of LPG TTs engaged in transporting LPG to the State will go down after October.
Sources informed that there is an acute need to increase the existing fleet of LPG TTs in view of the limited storage capacity of the Sekmai bottling plant and ensure that sufficient quantity of LPG refills are available to consumers.
If the fleet of LPG TTs is enlarged, LPG can be stocked at the Sekmai bottling plant to its full capacity of 1800 MT at all times and at the same time, LPG TTs can be used as standing storage tanks, sources said.
At present, 268 TTs are engaged in shipping bulk LPG to the Sekmai bottling plant.
These include 62 TTs of 12 MT capacity and 113 TTs of 7 MT capacity which have been requisitioned through fresh tender and there are 93 bullet TTs which have been left out.
The 93 bullet TTs which have been left out of the fresh tender are still engaged in transporting bulk LPG.
Even though the total number of bullet LPG TTs seems to be sufficient, they cannot make more than five/six trips in a month.
Moreover, only around 20 to 30 LPG TTs can find their place in the truck convoys escorted by CRPF, said the sources.
As such there is a growing need to increase the frequency of convoy movement, include more LPG TTs in the convoys and raise the total number of LPG TTs.
However, there is no possibility of raising the frequency of CRPF-escorted convoy movement at the moment.
Moreover, 93 TTs which have been left out of the fresh tender are most likely to be laid off from November 1, the sources added.