NOC to monitor the use of dual cylinders from today

KATHMANDU, March 10:

The government is starting a drive beginning Monday to make sure that only blue LPG cylinders are circulated for commercial use.

The monitoring intends to ensure the enforcement of dual-colored LPG cylinders policy that the government introduced three years ago to minimize the financial loss of Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC).

“If anyone is found using red cylinders for commercial use, we will reprimand them treating it as their first offence,” NOC Director Sushil Bhattarai said. “But if we found them using red cylinders in the next round of monitoring, we will take action against them.”

Bhattarai, however, didn´t say what action would be taken against the wrong-doers.

Officials of NOC said the state-owned petroleum monopolist will monitor hotels, restaurants and party venues at Kathmandu Metropolitan City as well as sub-metropolis and municipalities to curb the use of red LPG cylinders.

As per the policy, red LPG cylinders can be used only for household use. However, in the absence of strong monitoring, hotels, restaurants and party venues have been found using them.

At present, NOC suffers loss of Rs 864 per cylinder.

The monitoring teams under the Department of Commerce and Supply Management (DoCSM) will monitor five-star hotels, restaurants and party venues at the Kathmandu Metropolitan City. Similarly, local level teams will monitor the use of cylinders at the local level. NOC has sought the help of Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA) to conduct monitoring as the local market monitoring teams are led by the chief district officers of concerned districts.

NOC had held talks with officials of the Hotel Associations of Nepal (HAN) and Restaurant and Bar Association of Nepal (REBAN) before enforcing the use of dual-colored LPG cylinders. During the talks, the officials urged NOC to ensure enough supply of blue cylinders.

“The monitoring would help the state owned entity to come up with the exact details of blue LPG cylinders circulated in the market,” Bhattarai said, adding, “We have also deputed teams at bottling plants to collect data of blue cylinders.”

LPG bottlers have circulated around 4 million cylinders across the country. Of them, only around 300,000 are blue cylinders.

NOC officials say the effective use of blue cylinders for commercial use would help them to implement the dual-pricing system on LPG.

Source: Republica