Wayward power supply
Photo:A.M.Ahad / Driknews
We hear from our friends and relatives living in Bangladesh that the supply of electricity in the capital itself is highly erratic. They report that at every one-hour interval there is one-hour load shedding. They say, it is not only in Dhaka, the load shedding, a popular power saving method, is going on all over Bangladesh. If they are correct then Bangladesh offices run only 4 hours and industries 10 hours in 24 hours. Here are my rough calculations. A 24 hours day, half 12 hours time is daylight time and another 12 hours is night for sleep and rest. The load shedding then eats 6 hours from night and 6 hours from daylight. Usually, the office hours are during day time so the officials get only 6 hours for office work and remaining 6 hours allotted for them are eaten by load-shedding. Again from this 6 hours working time a person takes tea, goes to wash room and pray. If he spends another 2 hours for all these work, then he gets only 4 hours to work during his 8 working hours. On the other hand, the industries mostly run in two shifts. So, industries get a bit more time than an individual. Industries get 4 hours from day light period and full 6 hours from night totalling 10 hours. Will an industry survive running its production only 10 hours paying salary and wages for 24 hours? This is an alarming situation. No one will come to Bangladesh to invest if this situation continues. Whatever propaganda the government of Bangladesh makes in the world media, there is no chance for FDI, rather the ones who have already arrived here and invested earlier, will gradually shy away from Bangladesh. Electricity is not the lone hindrance, roads, gas supply, security issues, red-tapism in the offices, hartals are gigantic obstacles. If we look at other neighbours including some newly emerged countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, they are getting foreign investment more than us. Despite availability of cheap labourers, none will dare to come to Bangladesh and invest unless the prime obstacles are removed as early as possible. We have no place to go, but foreign nationals will not come with big money just to drain it out in load shedding. There will be no development in the country if those facilities could not be delivered to the economic-developers.
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