At the Zaman filling station in Merul Badda in the capital, vehicles queued for gas, the line stretching for nearly a kilometre into Hatirjheel and creating a long jam along one side of the road. Yet there was still no gas.
Speaking at the spot on Sunday night, drivers said the long line was simply a wait for gas to arrive. There had been no gas all day, and the queue had formed on word that it would come at night.
A gas sales worker, Asad, said gas had not yet arrived and that they would start dispensing once it did. Asked when it would come, he said he had heard it would arrive around 12 midnight.
Supply had been fine on Friday afternoon and Saturday, but on Sunday there was again no gas, as before, and the long queue for it.
CNG driver Abdul Malek said that after getting good gas on Saturday, the shortage had started again, and that the situation had lasted all day Sunday. It was now past 10pm, he said, with still no sign of gas and no telling when it would come.
Private-car driver Sanaullah said he had got Tk300 of gas at Demra on Sunday morning, but his tank was now on the red light, so he had come here for gas and would see when he got any. He had got a little on Saturday, he said; when the pressure was good his cylinder took more than Tk600 of gas, but the situation was not good now and he was waiting to see how much he could get.
It was not only the Zaman filling station: nearly every filling station in the capital was in the same state. The queue at the CNG station in Malibagh stretched to Rampura Bazar, and Akij in Tejgaon was much the same. Long queues were also reported at the CNG stations in Khilkhet and near the airport.
Tarek, a worker at the Akij filling station, said gas came after 12 midnight but the pressure was not good, so they dispensed as much as they could; from Monday morning until now there had been no supply.
With gas supply in this state, CNG-run private cars and auto-rickshaw drivers are in dire difficulty.
Home kitchens, meanwhile, have again been hit by a gas shortage. Supply held on Friday and Saturday but was gone from Sunday morning; even where the stove lights, cooking is not possible.
Kaniz Fatema, a homemaker in the Banasree area, said the past two days had been a test of the gas supply, and now the situation was back to what it had been. The gas in the stove was not enough to cook with, she said, and she was having to cook on an induction stove.
With the home gas shortage, thousands of families in the capital are now cooking by alternative means.
The crisis arose from delayed LNG unloading due to maintenance at the liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal at Maheshkhali and a resulting fall in gas supply to the national grid, hitting residential customers, CNG drivers and industry. The government has said the crisis will ease considerably within a few days.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report