Speakers tell seminar
Speakers at a seminar yesterday stressed on the need for shutting down rental and quick rental power plants and repairing national power plants to meet the country’s power demands.
They also suggested taking initiatives and setting up big power plants to increase energy production locally rather than depending on multinational companies.
Shaptahik, a weekly news magazine, organised the seminar on “Excessive hike of electricity price: Liability of rental-quick rental power plants” at Bangladesh Institute of Law and International Affairs auditorium in the capital.
“Not a single country in the world succeeded in solving their electricity crisis through rental power plants,” said Dr Akbar Ali Khan, former adviser to a caretaker government.
He said the government could solve the power problem by repairing the existing power plants in the country and solving the gas crisis instead of opting rental power plants.
Why will people pay excessive electricity bill resulting from system loss, mismanagement, corruption and quick rental power plants, he asked.
Columnist Syed Abul Maksud said corruption in the power sector can be much more devastating than that in any other sectors of the country.
A keynote paper of Kallol Mostafa presented at the seminar showed that the main causes of increasing power production cost included using liquid energy instead of gas in electricity production, failing to increase gas production at cheap rate through state owned companies, and purchasing gas at higher rate from multinational companies.
Engr BD Rahmatullah, in another keynote paper, said the government will have to give Tk 20,700 crore yearly if it takes 2,000 megawatts (MW) power from quick rental and rental power plants and this cost will go up with increasing power needs.
Shaptahik Editor Golam Murtaza moderated the seminar while economist Prof Abu Ahmed, CPB General Secretary Mujahidul Islam Selim and economist Prof Pias Karim addressed it among others.
Courtesy of The Daily Star
