Another wind power plant!
Your 'Star Business Report" of 15th. March is indeed very welcome news. But will it really happen? Engr. Fazlur Rahman's paper on the subject at the roundtable on 'Potential of Wind Power: Vision2021' on March 14 was a pragmatic and practical presentation of real issues on the subject.
Regarding 'Wind Map of Bangladesh' I wonder if it is being done by our Met. Dept., as no funds have been provided for it. It may need perhaps say Tk 10 crore (F.E)! Meanwhile, as reported in the same paper on the same day, we have uselessly spent Tk.222 crore, in the last ten years to maintain eight MiG 29s! This comes to over Tk:2.75 crore, per MiG per year! What do the MiG 29s do? Fly past on ceremonial occasions and fly for training. Possibly, nothing else.
Without uninterrupted power supply, which is today's fact of life, with the industries having curtailed production, where will the cash foreign exchange come from for maintaining the MiG 29s and F7s that we have?
We need people's commitment and involvement more than military hardware to fight an enemy. This has already been proved, in the battle for Bangladesh!
What we need now, and the sooner the better, is power from alternative sources. We can, if we seriously and nationally commit ourselves with the help and encouragement of the government, generate at least 1500MW of power from solar, wind, municipal waste and human excreta. For this endeavour, we need maybe Tk 150 to 200 crore as capital investment over the next five years. Do we have the will to do it, or are MiGs and F7s our priority now? It is for us to decide!
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