Govt’s LPG plan for poor hits price wall in urban slums

NEW DELHI: Only half of the households in urban slums fully depend on LPG (liquefied natural gas supplied in cylinders) for cooking, while the rest continue to use traditional biomass fuels — either as a supplement or exclusive source of energy — due to issues of affordability, availability and taste preference.

According to a CEEW (Council on Energy, Environment and Water) study of clean energy access in six states, 16% of the 656 households surveyed in 83 slums across Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh – home to a quarter of India’s urban slum population – still use highly-polluting traditional fuels such as firewood, dung cakes, agriculture residue, charcoal, and kerosene as their primary source of energy for cooking.

The study says 12% of the surveyed households did not seek LPG connection, even though they were aware of the government’s ‘Ujjwala’ scheme envisaging free LPG connection to poor households. “The high recurring expenditure on refills deter them from procuring an LPG connection.”