Fuel crunch forces Phidim hotels to shut

Phidim, November 16

Hoteliers in Panchthar district headquarters Phidim are under threat of losing their business owing to the blockade at various border points and prolonged fuel shortage across country.

While over a dozen big hotels have already faced closure on account of the fuel crisis, the remaining hotels too are set to follow suit. “Everything was okay until the shortage of petroleum products, among other daily necessities, surfaced,” said Barun Tumbapo, Proprietor of Phidim Bhanchha Ghar.

Phidim-based Hotel Ajima, one of the biggest hotels in the area, has also shut its services. “We’ve closed the hotel for the past four days, but are somehow feeding the lodgers by cooking food on firewood,” said proprietor of the hotel Bimal Shrestha.

Another Phidim-based hotel, Hotel UK, has also been closed for the past one week after daily commodities such as LPG, among others, went scarce.

“What else could we do as we ran out of our stock of LPG and other daily necessities due to the prolonged bandh and blockade?” asked proprietor of the hotel Hang Narayan Hangsarumba, adding that the closure of his and many other hotels had hit hard devotees visiting the Phathibhara shrine as well as foreign and domestic tourists headed to Kanchanjungha Base Camp.

According to Raju Tumbapo, there has been no supply of LPG in the headquarters for the past three months. “Most of the hotels had to shut mainly due to lack of LPG.

Some hotels are somehow making do with firewood and kerosene, but as even those aren’t easy to procure, the hotels are likely to shut within ten days or so,” he said.

Meanwhile, the hoteliers have demanded that the administration do the needful to end the fuel crisis and ease life here.