Charcoal still preferred over modern gadgets in Valley

 

Srinagar, Feb 2: Despite availability of modern heating gadgets, charcoal still remains preferable choice for Kashmiris to keep themselves warm during the harsh winter.

The charcoal in the city market is selling like hot cakes, thanks to the frequent power cuts. The traders say that the sales this year increased as the winter this year is worst than previous years and the frequent power cuts pushed people to buy more charcoal.

“This was the harshest winter in past ten years as in January we witnessed snowfall more than thrice. We witnessed a large number of people coming to our shops to buy charcoal,” said Abdul Razaq Dar, a charcoal dealer in Fateh Kadal area of old city. He added that he sold nearly 15000 bags of charcoal in January which according to him had happened after many years. Dar who has been in the business from the past 30 years says that he has availability of the charcoal in different varieties. The price of a charcoal depends on its size.

“The price of a locally produced bag varies from Rs 400 to 600 depending on the size of it,” he said.

The dealers associated with the trade say that in previous years the charcoal was imported from Kuathua but later a ban was imposed by government on it production. Now the imported hardwood charcoal, which imports to the valley from the neighboring state of Punjab and the price starts from Rs 2700 per quintal.

Another dealer echoed similar views, “The increase in the production started with the cap of subsidized LPG. Earlier people would prefer gas heaters but cap on it has pushed people to switch to the traditional way of keeping warm,” he said.

However, recently the quota of subsidized cooking cylinders has been hiked to 12 from 9 per household. The government had initially capped the supply of subsidized domestic LPG cylinders to six per household annually in September 2012 in a bid to cut its subsidy bill. The quota was raised to nine in January 2013.