As Gas Cylinder Prices Hit 2,500 Taka, Low-Income Families Return to Firewood Stoves

On the opposite side of Sher-e-Bangla Nagar police station in the capital stand rows of tin houses. There, by the roadside, Tamanna (32) was cooking on a clay stove burning firewood. She can no longer afford to buy a gas cylinder because the price has risen so much.

Tamanna said, 'Gas is too expensive. I cannot manage to buy gas at such a high price.' Like her, many low-income people in the capital are now cooking on clay stoves, burning firewood, split wood and paper.

The Bangladesh Energy Regulatory Commission (BERC) has set the price of a 12-kg LPG cylinder at 2,060 taka for this November. But in the market it is being sold for 2,300 to 2,500 taka.

Last March, the fixed price of a 12-kg cylinder was 1,341 taka. At that time cylinders were sold in the market for around 1,500 taka.

Tamanna lives with her husband and two small children. She runs a shop with her husband, selling piyaju, beguni, chop, chola, chicken rolls and other food items.

Cooking on firewood is also expensive now, Tamanna said. Firewood costs 15 taka a kilogram, 600 taka a maund.

Tamanna's husband Monir Hossain said the prices of daily essentials are high. The cost of making the food he sells has gone up, so his income has fallen. He said, 'The poor will remain poor forever.'

Rahima (50), another resident of the Agargaon slum, works from house to house. Because of her age and illness she can no longer work properly. She too cooks on a clay stove.

Rahima said buying one cylinder for 2,500 taka is beyond her means. Cooking on a firewood stove blackens her clothes with soot, makes it hard to breathe in the smoke, and blackens the house as well.

Rahima has one daughter and one son. Her husband died about seven months ago. Her daughter works in a garment factory and her son drives an auto-rickshaw. Rahima said their home was in Bhola; the river took everything.

In West Shewrapara in the capital, some plots still have houses with tin roofs. Low-income people live there, earning a living by hawking, driving auto-rickshaws or working in other people's homes. Some of them have also built clay stoves and cook on them.

One of them, speaking on condition of anonymity, said she earns 2,500 taka a month doing two jobs (wiping floors and washing clothes) in each house. And buying a single cylinder costs 2,500 taka.

The government no longer gives gas connections to homes. The monthly bill for a Titas Gas Distribution Company connection for two burners is 1,080 taka. On the other hand, a family of five needs two cylinders a month for regular cooking, which costs 5,000 taka a month.

Arranging 2,500 taka at once to buy one cylinder is hard for a poor person. That is why they are forced to turn to firewood. Meanwhile, the demand for firewood and its price are rising. Sellers say the price of firewood has risen by 50 to 100 taka per maund depending on quality, and it sells for 400 to 600 taka.

Hafizur (35), a firewood seller in Agargaon, said that before gas prices rose he used to sell one to one-and-a-half maunds of firewood a day. Now he sells seven to ten maunds a day.