CAIRO - How could a widow live on a monthly pension of LE240 ($40) and afford a butane gas cylinder for LE17? The answer to this question shows why consumers have to queue up for hours outside main outlets to buy a cylinder for the official price of LE4, particularly in times of shortage, when the price shoots up five times or even more. These queues usually lack the least degree of order. Skirmishes and fights erupt easily, either because of little respect for the queue or because of short supply. Butane gas cylinders are indispensable in residential areas that have not yet been supplied with natural gas. The problem is even more severe in provinces where gas cylinders are used on a big scale. Consumers usually buy cylinders from dealers on wheels who work in what is known as the Young Graduates Project. They get a daily quota of cylinders from major storehouses for LE2.5 each, which they deliver to consumers at LE7. However, citizens who wish to pay less, exchange empty cylinders for filled ones at the fixed price of LE4 directly from a storehouse. Warehouse attendants are complaining that the shortage has reached 75 per cent of actual needs. They attribute the problem to the fact that regional unrest has adversely affected crude gas imports. Sobhi Salem, in charge of a CairoGas storehouse, says that although their daily quota is 3,000 cylinders, they now only get l,000. “The huge queues we have been witnessing daily for almost ten days are very worrying,” he says. While citizens complain that they are forced to pay as much as LE15 to LE30 per cylinder for home delivery, depending on the social standard of the district, roaming vendors deny that they are taking advantage of the current crisis. The present shortage is not unprecedented; it actually occurs every now and then, leaving citizens perplexed, as official statements speak of abundant supply, while conditions on the ground are the opposite. Black market profiteers manage one way or another to get access to a big number of cylinders. They make things much worse for those who cannot afford to pay more than they usually do. Poor areas in the Egyptian capital like el-Bassatin, Manshiet Nasr and Daar el-Salam are most affected by the crisis. Citizens lining up in queues accuse storehouse supervisors of favouring middlemen at their expense. According to Mohamed Abdel Moneim of a Manshiet Nasr storehouse, members of the Young Graduate Project get their share by virtue of an agreement between the butane gas company and the Ministry of Social Insurance. He says that the company is not responsible for the cylinder price. Although officials at the Ministry of Oil have recently stated that the current diesel and butane gas crisis would be solved in a couple of days, angry citizens in Upper and Lower Egypt have come out to protest. Some 2000 protesters in Daashlout village, Assiut, have reportedly blocked the Western Desert Road in an attempt to pressure officials to find a prompt solution. There have been calls for many years to cover more governorates and densely populated districts in the capital with a natural gas network, in order to avoid an occasional cylinder crisis that makes life even more difficult than it already is.
