Power outages disrupt life in 21 districts

Students of Anirban School and Aklima Shishu Niketan in Gopalganj town brought out a procession yesterday demanding smooth power supply. PHOTO: STAR

Frequent load shedding is also severely affecting production in mills and factories and hampering irrigation in agriculture lands.

The power crsis triggered demosntrations in several areas in the last few days.

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Power Development Board (PDB) sources said, the total demand for electricity in the 21 districts is 500 MW. But as most of the units in the area are not operating, 100 to 150 MW power was available daily during the last one week. The power is supplied from the national grid.

Only 20 to 30 per cent of the power needed in the area is now supplies, it was gathered from PDB sources. Most areas in the 21 districts go under the spell of frequent load shedding.

The five units in the area now producing only 80 MW power are also limping.

Sources in Jessore PDB said, the 11 units in the areas used to produce around 338 MW electricity. Four units in Khulna has an installed capacity to produce 226 MW.

Three of them are out of order. The 110 MW unit is shut for one month and the 28 MW unit is inoperative for one week for mechanical trouble and the rest 60 MW unit is also closed since Wednesday.

The lone barge mounted 28 MW plant generates 14 MW power, but it often remains inoperative.

All the three 20 MW units at Bheramara are also closed. Two of them are closed for the last one month and the rest one stopped production on Friday.

In Bhola, two MW gas-based units are out of order for long. One of them used to produce 20 MW and the other had a capacity to produce 6 MW power.

Four other units with a total generation capacity of 52 MW are now producing 27 to 28 MW daily.

Chairman of the Western Zone of Power Distribution Company Kazi Istiaque Hasan Chowdhury admitted that 6 units were closed recently. All the plants under the zone are date-expired. Engineers are trying to keep them somehow operative.

Unless new units are set up, all the units in the zone will become inoperative, he said.

Meanwhile, Agriculture Extension Department (AED) sources in Jessore said most of the farmers cultivating Amon in the 10 districts of Khulna division need to irrigate their fields due to shortage of rainfall. But load shedding in causing difficulty to run deep tubewells and shallow machines for irrigation.

Aman products will fall in this region if this situation continues, he said.