Ctg crippled by severe electricity crisis, industries suffer most

FE Team | Published: September 27, 2013 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00

Pankaj Dastider CHITTAGONG, Sept 26: People of Chittagong and the businesses have for quite some time been plagued by the most severe electricity crisis in recent times. Load shedding of electricity has surpassed all previous records and the region is getting barely half the demand, while the load shedding situation in Dhaka is "much better", trade body leaders allege. Power cuts are frequent in the region as people get electricity for half an hour after cuts for every one hour and the electricity has seen a routine outage for the last few months, traders said alleging that it was hampering production, damaging machinery in the factories and prompting extra cost due to continuing production with diesel. The residents of Baraiyarhat Municipality have put up a road barricade at Mirsarai on Dhaka-Chittagong Highway and laid siege to the PDB (Power Development Board) local office demanding a halt to load shedding which had been continuing even for four to five hours at a stretch in the area. Aggrieved industries and trade body leaders have sought intervention of the Power and Energy Adviser demanding 'equal' load shedding hours in Dhaka and Chittagong. Industries are suffering not only from electricity but also from gas shortages, as the authorities have imposed area-wise gas rationing in the running industries while gas connection to new industries, including 12 major ones, remains totally stopped since 2009. In a letter to the Prime Minister's Adviser for Power and Energy on September 25, the vice president of Chittagong Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and Industry AM Mahbub Chowdhury said the government was realising revenue worth Tk 500 billion every year through the Custom House, Port, electricity bills, VAT etc from Chittagong which constitutes the lion's share of the national revenue. "Dhaka being the administrative city and Chittagong being the country's commercial city should get equal shares of electricity and gas. But we have seen that the electricity crisis is not felt so severely in Dhaka as in Chittagong," he said in the letter. Normal electricity demand in Chittagong is 680-700 megawatts (mw) which increases to 739mw in the summer, PDB officials said. They said they were getting 510mw of electricity from the local power plants, while getting 100-120 mw from the national grid. But what PDB claims has been termed by local people as untrue because they noted that PDB regional office was behind the load shedding of electricity every alternate hour in the whole city and some areas were experiencing continuous load shedding for the last few weeks. PDB authorities in Chittagong said all four gas-run power plants have stopped production as they are not getting gas. The plants are 150-mw Shikalbaha Power Plant, the two units of 210-mw plants each at Raozan and 60-mw Shikalbaha gas-turbine power plant. Production at the three of those plants remained suspended since 15 August while production at Shikalbaha 150mw plant remained stalled since September 21. On the other hand, seven plants, including Kaptai Hydropower, are producing 740.9 mw of electricity currently.