IRRI-Boro setback in Nilphamari

IRRI-Boro have been cultivated on 75,672 acres of land in the district this year.

A total of 6,306 irrigation machines are in operation, 2,306 of them with power from Power Development Board (PDB). The rest 4000 get electricity from Palli Bidyut Samity (Rural Electrification Board).

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The machines which run with PDB power need about 20 MW a day.

But PDB in its six feeder lines gets only 2.45 MW from its Syedpur grid, sources there said. As a result it has go for nine hours' load-shedding in its six feeder lines, they said.

PBS needs 12 MW a day to feed the irrigation machines connected with but it gets only 1.5 MW, sources said.

Farmers Mohsin Ali, Fazlar Rahman and Muku Mia of Harwa village and Afsar Ali and Abdul Zabbar of Kundu Pukur village in the Sadar upazila said they can run their machines hardly for 5-6 hours a day against at least 18 hours needed. Many IRRI-Boro lands have dried up in the peak season now, they claimed.

When contacted, a PDB engineer in Nilphamari admitted the power deficit and said he placed a demand to the authorities for adequate power supply during the IRRI-Boro season, but to no effect.