Foreign loan and electricity
In our childhood we learnt that Africa was the Dark Continent in the world.
Is there any country in Europe, America, Asia or Africa today where there is electricity supply for one hour and no electricity supply for the next one hour? And this is going on round the year!
Is our country the darkest and the poorest country in the world today?
What have we done in the last thirty-eight years of our independence?
We had several democratic governments, military govt, civil and caretaker govt, and what not, Every govt. has been blaming each other for corruption, inefficiency, lapses and omissions and each claims to be the best of all. The rich are becoming richer and the poor poorer day by day. The governments coming to power take more and more of foreign loans and claim credit, efficiency and success.
In fact, we have taken a colossal amount of foreign loans. But where has all the money gone? Would our govt. kindly let us know the break-up of total amount of foreign loans used for different economic development works in our country?
If we have money in our public exchequer, we may go ahead with construction of Padma bridge and Dhaka underground train service. But if not, we should not seek foreign loan for construction of Padma bridge and underground train service. There is no such emergency and urgency that we must go for these two projects now or never.
We may wait till such time the world economic recession eases and we may delay these two projects by twenty years to see the rising sea water level, which may affect one fifth of the territory of Bangladesh.
Our greatest need and demand of time is to increase and improve our electricity generation and supply and to mitigate the untold sufferings of the people caused by frequent load shedding. If we fail to do so we would be totally crippled.
So, if necessary we may divert Padma bridge and underground train foreign loans to meet our urgent and immediate requirements of electricity in the interest of public service. This is the doctrine of necessity.
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