Panic booking, staff shortage hit LPG cylinder delivery

Kolkata: Several parts of the city saw long queues and empty cylinders stacked up outside LPG outlets on Wednesday and Thursday as the distributors were forced to ask customers to pick up their cylinders since they didn’t have enough manpower to deliver them to homes. The situation was further compounded by a surge in demand amidst the lockdown.
Officials of LPG providers said there was no problem in supply but in almost all distribution centres, those who deliver them to doorsteps were not reporting to work owing to fear of contracting the disease.
According to customers, trouble kicked off from the first day of lockdown as delivery persons found it difficult to reach the distribution centres. Entally resident Rajkumar Bhattacharya had to hire a rickshaw paying four times the actual fare to reach his LPG distributor at Padmapukur on Wednesday. “Usually, we make an online booking and the cylinder is delivered within 48 hours. When it wasn’t delivered within that time, I called up the distributor and he asked me to collect the cylinder as he did not have manpower,” said Bhattacharya.