Gas crisis: An outrage

The litany of reports continues about gas explosions in different parts of the island, the most recent of these in the Mannar District where an entire home was gutted by a fire ignited by a leaking LPG cylinder.

Grappling with food shortages and scarcity of cooking fuel, an economy on the verge of collapse and a deadly pandemic still raging across the world, Sri Lankans must also contend with living with a time-bomb in their kitchen.

According to official police data, nearly 730 incidents involving gas stove explosions have been recorded between 1 November to 15 December 2021. Most of the incidents were linked to LPG sold by the state-run Litro Gas Lanka Ltd., one of two main cooking gas suppliers in the market.

Last month, the Court of Appeal ordered Litro to recall gas cylinders and replace them free of charge with cylinders approved by the Sri Lanka Standards Institute. The Court also ordered both gas companies to maintain a composition of 70% butane and 30% propane in the LPG cylinders sold to consumers in the country.

Despite denials by the manufacturer, scientists and now an expert committee appointed by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa have pointed to the decision by gas companies to increase the propane content of the domestic cooking gas to 50% without making necessary changes to regulators and hoses was the reason for the explosions that have already claimed many lives and injured dozens of people. Consumer Affairs Authority former Executive Director Thushan Gunewardane raised concerns about the composition of cylinders being released to the market long before the explosions began.

The issue is literally burning, endangering Sri Lankan homes in which children live, with gas cylinders exploding even inside school boarding houses. Yet it is stunning that at least two months after the incidents were first reported, no one has taken responsibility for the completely preventable deaths, injuries, and grievous damage to property. The Government has failed abjectly to hold anyone accountable for the travesty that is posing an existential threat to millions of Sri Lankan citizens right inside their homes. Nor does it see fit to make a concrete intervention that will ensure the necessary safety checks to prevent these explosions from taking place. As with all the failings of this Government that has brought Sri Lanka to the brink of socio-economic collapse, there will be no accountability and no redress for victims of this consumer tragedy. And it is nothing short of an outrage.

But as with all travesties unfolding in Sri Lanka, the Government of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa gets away with shoddy governance because the country is hamstrung by one of the most ineffective opposition parties in living memory. The party of Ranil Wickremesinghe migrated lock stock and barrel to the Sajith Premadasa-led Samagi Jana Balawegaya, and therein proved that their Leader may not have been the only problem with the UNP’s brand of opposition politics after all. Ineffectual and late to respond to the issues that are literally blowing up people’s houses in Sri Lanka, the main opposition helps the Government to limp along – despite the myriad crises plaguing the nation, and despite growing public discontent, anger and misery.

In the absence of corrective action by the Government and effective main opposition intervention to put pressure on the ruling administration to address the gas crisis, other opposition parties in Parliament, civil society actors and other citizen groups must work harder to raise a voice on behalf of a beleaguered and helpless populace. The time for relying on mainstream politics to save the crisis from its own making is long past.