The moribund power sector
Power sector in Bangladesh seems to be a terminally sick patient, with no hope of recovery. The doctor has changed (From BNP to AL), but the patient is still in serious condition! Cynics and sceptics feel that there is a powerful 'Candle Manufacturing Lobby' behind all this. They are out to replace the electric lights, fans and air conditioners by candles and old rope-pulled manual 'Pankhas', that may still possibly be seen in remote rural 'kacharis'! That will be our domestic and commercial picture of power supply in the next few years. Meanwhile, day-by-day, our old fuel-guzzling power plants will be scrapped. By 2015, our actual electric power generation capacity will be well below 3000MW.
Today our power demand is officially given as 5330MW; whereas, in reality it is at least 6500MW. The gap of 1170MW today, represents the saga of load shedding, now approaching to cover 50 percent of the 24-hour day (ie: 12 hours) black out across Bangladesh! Can candlepower be far behind, with the 'pull-pankha' also following it?
By the next decade, we will be back to the 1900 era of office work. The pen will replace electric typewriters, computers and other modern electronic calculators. Gone will be e-mail, wireless and internet and other global electronic telecommunication links. We will be back to postal mail, with postal mail sorters, the railway mail service, and in rural areas we will have 'postal runners' who will be running across the country, carrying the mail sack on their backs!
The flip side will be that employment opportunity in the postal sector will increase by leaps and bounds! So will be the growth in railway and river steamer traffic to cope with the tons of mail and postal orders moving to and fro, supported by a few hours of telegraph service, totally dependent on in-house postal electric power generation! After all, we know that every dark cloud has a silver lining, as the wise men say!
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.
Comments