Deepesh Aryal and two of his restaurant staff set out in the dead of night and brave Kathmandu’s biting wintry chill to meet a carefully cultivated contact.
As they count their cash, they could be planning a drug deal or a cloak-and-dagger meeting of spies — but the truth is rather more prosaic: they are joining a 10-hour line for cooking gas.
Like thousands of traders in Kathmandu, 28-year-old Aryal will go to extraordinary lengths to secure the fuel he needs to run his business amid an energy crisis that is crippling life in the impoverished nation.
He is forced to line up for the best part of a day and, after his 4am start, he finally has three full cylinders of cooking gas.
However, they will run out and soon he will have to repeat the arduous trip.
“I had to wait until 2pm to get the cylinders filled,” Aryal said. “I was lucky because I knew the gas dealer. Imagine how hard it is for people without connections.”
A severe shortage of gas cylinders, essential for heating and cooking in a country with no mains supply, has increased the hardship for Nepalese already enduring seasonal daily power cuts of up to 14 hours.
Exacerbating the problem, a shortage of gas and diesel means people have to line up for many hours or turn to the black market to run cars and the generators that light their shops when the electricity goes out.
The crisis has led to angry criticism of the government and even civil unrest, with protests stopping traffic and citizens resorting to criminality to get hold of fuel.
Earlier this month a group of Nepalese stopped delivery trucks carrying gas on a busy highway and distributed the cylinders among themselves.
The deprivations and sacrifices of the fuel crisis can be seen in every corner of Kathmandu.
Students have raided gas depots, lines of cars and motorcycles snake back hundreds of meters from gas stations, fuel trucks require police escorts and restaurants have reduced menus in an effort to save on gas.
Taxi driver Jagaran Tamang, 22, says he is forced to spend half his day lining up for fuel and is even considering moving to South Korea for temporary work.
“These days, I drive to a gas station and wait in line for more than five hours. During that time, I could have ferried half a dozen passengers,” he said. “It has become hard to survive.”
The factors blamed for the crisis are complex, but years of political paralysis following the 1996 to 2006 Maoist insurgency have not helped.
Experts say Nepal’s huge mountain river system could be generating up to 83,000 megawatts of power, allowing it to sell surplus electricity to other countries.
However, development of infrastructure ground to a halt during the civil war and the nation currently produces just 688 megawatts a year.
As a result, it has to import petroleum products worth 80 billion rupees (US$1 billion) a year.
The government-run Nepal Oil Corp, which provides subsidized fuel to consumers, has fallen behind on its payments to India and last month the company raised gas and diesel prices, leading to angry protests.
Demonstrators blocked traffic and shut shops across the country, withdrawing only after Nepalese Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai pledged to address their demands.
The government has since given the company 2 billion rupees (US$25.4 million) to pay off the Indian Oil Corporation, but the crisis continues unabated.
Energy analyst Amrit Nakarmi described the fuel shortages as an “artificially created crisis” caused by the government’s failure to institute a pricing structure based on demand and world prices.
“The government has arbitrarily increased the price of petroleum products. It does not want to manage the [fuel supply] properly, but neither does it want to privatize, which has exacerbated the problem,” he said. “Our dependence on fossil fuel is increasing each passing day with the increase in population and the development of small urban areas where consumers prefer cooking gas. The crisis will be more frequent in coming years.”
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was