Manufacturing industries count huge loss
Sufferings of city dwellers mount due to severe power crises
Staff Correspondent
In the capital, frequent power disruption and load shedding is seriously affecting the city dwellers, educational institutions, business establishments and hospitals as the supply of electricity fell drastically due to gas shortages.
Business activities, industry’s productions, hospital services and normal activities of common people in the city and its surrounding areas are being disrupted due to power crises. Sufferings of the people, especially SSC examinees and students of different levels, have mounted due to frequent load shedding.
The suffering may continue and intensify in the coming days until the gas supply to power generation plants is normal though businesses and hospitals in the city continue their activities with assistance of generators.
Besides, thousands of small and medium scale industries at different places in the city are facing serious problems failing to produce output at required level due to random power failure, causing losses in millions of taka.
Talking to this correspondent, people from different areas in the city and its surrounding areas said that they had been passing for hours without light and the entrepreneurs said production in their factories faced setback as power supply were being continuously disrupted.
BGMEA president Anwarul Alam Chowdhury said that their production in the industries in the city has already been decreasing alarmingly due to disruption of continuous power supply. “We are continuing our manufacturing activities in the industries with 30 per cent loss due to power shortages and production cost is increasing automatically. This continuous situation may force us to wind up business,” he said, adding that the government should necessary measures to provide adequate power supply to the productive sectors including garments manufacturing.
Director of Pan pacific hospital, Rafiqul Islam Khokan said that due to frequent load shedding without any announcement they have to fall into abrupt problems along with patients. Very often load shedding takes place when operations are conducted in hospitals. “Power disruption to the hospitals can push patients into life risk. So the government should consider the issue seriously and provide continuous supply in the hospitals,” he said.
On the other hand, power situation has taken a serious turn as the country has been experiencing about 1200 MW of electricity shortfall due to inadequate generation by the Power Development Board (PDB) while the country generates average 3300 Megawatts electricity daily against a demand for more than 4500 MWs.
It may be pointed that the capital is being provided with 1185 megawatts against a demand for about 1800 MWs. But this demand will be rise to 2200 when the peak summertime will arrive. Usually, peak summer is counted from middle March to middle October when electricity consumption goes up to its highest level because of hot weather as well as a huge need for irrigation. For irrigation purposes, a huge amount of power was cut out from the city supply and was allocated to the rural areas for this particular period.
Every year the government allocates millions of taka for the Power Division to improve their services by taking necessary steps, but it continues to fail with impunity to meet the demand of the people.
Courtesy of www.thebangladeshtoday.com
