The New Nation - Internet Edition

UNB, Dhaka

The power-supply situation kept worsening in these hot days because the PDB had to shut down more plants for gas shortages, badly affecting life and business.

According to PDB officials, last week, they had to reduce production by 728 megawatts due to short supply of gas. But This week, they have to cut down generation by about 794MW for want of gas for fuelling the plants.

"Actually, we're getting more reduced supply of gas this week," said a senior official of the Power Development Board, wanting not to be quoted by name. "We have to keep 12 to 13 generation units under shutdown on a regular basis for shortage in gas supply," he added. The PDB generated 3500MW-plus against a demand for 4400MWs. However, experts believe, the demand is more than 4700MWs, but PDB officially does not admit the actual demand.

Last week, the average generation was about the same. An official said that as the demand is increasing fast, so the demand-supply gap is widening.

The PDB had to go for load shedding of more than 1000MWs to manage the mismatch between demand and supply. This year, urban areas are experiencing relatively more power shortages as the government is pursuing a policy to give priority to rural areas to support farming to make up for the crop losses caused by back-to-back natural disasters.

Chief Advisor's Special Assistant for Power and Energy Ministry Dr Tamim Monday said that the government policy would continue until the new crops were harvested.

The capital city of Dhaka has to face a load shedding between 700 and 800 megawatts regularly against its demand for more than 1800MWs, and the on-again, off-again power supply hampers normal life and business, especially production in mills and factories.

Many areas of the city have to experience outages for few hours in separate spells in the day as well as at nighttime.

The government now strictly maintains the shopping mall- closing hour at 8:00pm as part of a load-management chart.