People annoyed with frequent power outages have started holding protests in places across the country. People held protests demanding uninterrupted power supply at Raipur in Lakshmipur, Harinakundu in Jhenaidah and Mirsarai in Chittagong in the past two days. They said that they had been facing power cuts 12 to 18 times a day for a few days.Power distribution company officials told New Age that they had to cause power cuts for six to eight hours a day in Dhaka and other big cities and for about 12 hours in rural areas.
People of Raipur enforced a 24-hour general strike beginning Wednesday morning demanding uninterrupted power supply, bdnews24.com reports.
The news agency also reported that people of Mirsarai in Chittagong blocked
the Dhaka–Chittagong Highway on Wednesday morning to push for the same demand. The blockade caused long tailback on the highway. The people also laid siege to the Palli Bidyut Samiti office at Barayarhat.
Shafiqur Rahman, who joined the protests at Mirsarai, said that they had been supplied with power for three hours on Tuesday.
On Wednesday afternoon, the power division secretary, Monwar Islam, said that insufficient gas supply to power plants had caused a significant decline in generation. ‘It happens as Petrobangla is renovating a gas field.’
Monwar said that the situation would continue till October 2 as the renovation of the gas field would continue till then.
Gas supply to power plants has dropped by 70-80 million cubic feet a day for a few days, a Power Development Board official said. ‘This results in a significant drop in power generation.’
According to data available with Power Grid Company of Bangladesh, the highest generation of electricity has dropped below 5,500MW; the generation was more than 6,000MW a few days ago.
The New Age correspondent in Jhenaidah said that people of a number of villages had set fire to a Palli Bidyut Samiti office at Harinakundu on Tuesday night.
An engineer of the office, Mosharraf Hossain, said that about 200 people about 9:30pm tried to burn the motorcycle of the resident engineer. They then set fire to some furniture in the office. Fire fighters later put out the flames.
The PBS general manager in Jhenaidah, Nityananda Kundu, said that the subscribers were threatening PBS people as they had not been able to provide uninterrupted power supply for a couple of weeks.
-With New Age input
