Bangladesh has introduced Liquefied Petrolium Gas (LPG) for cooking to Rohingya refugees apart from firewood in order to reduce environmental impact since 2018.
In late 2020, UNHCR initiated a preliminary project to look at the “benefits of introducing pressure cookers” to the Rohingya refugee. However, it has been suspended due to COVID-19. Later, in November, UNHCR & IOM with support from WFP trained both refugees and host communities on the use of the pressure cooker. The initial pre-pilot project of a sample size of 400 households in the camps and 32 households in the hosting community showed that pressure cooker is helping to reduce the usage of LPG to 20-25 per cent, a variable, achievable depending on the household dynamics.
Another positive output was realized by the initial analysis of LPG consumption data for pre-distribution and post-distribution periods shows more than a 50 per cent improvement in fuel efficiency, which is similar to savings realized in Nepal by Bhutanese refugees during a similar project by UNHCR.
Refugee families reported that they were able to adjust their cooking habits rapidly to the use of pressure cookers to prepare a wide variety of food, from rice and dal to fish, meat and vegetables. As an added benefit, refugees reported saving time on cooking about 15-30 minutes per meal. The following cooking tool also environmentally friendly which helps to reduces carbon emissions and use of fuel.
This project will be scaled up in the coming months to a full pilot project reaching 6,000 refugee households.
