What happened to the vaunted road-map for the power sector?

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SHERPUR: Allegations have been raised against Nakugaon AL leaders and UP members over serious bungling in allotting 25 newly built homes under cluster village project in Nalitabari upazila. — Banglar Chokh

A great deal of interest and hope was created when last year the government unfurled a complete road-map for a turnaround for the better in the power sector. With their worst experienced and suffered long lingering power crisis, people in Bangladesh were indeed very much heartened to know that the government which they elected with so much of hope to address long pending national problems of a growingly serious nature, would get down to reversing positively the slide in the power sector that seemed poised to ruin the economy and take away basic comforts from their lives.
But that greatly inspired belief in the abilities and the will of the government in this respect is turning weak. For, if for the last one year, people could see that the government has been able to at least stem the rot in the power sector and accomplish even bits of progress indicating further successes in the near future, then they could remain inspired. But as it is, they are once again getting mired in hopelessness. Government's own latest admissions and credible media reports to the effect that hardly there has been any progress in the power sector, is helping to build such gloom in people's minds.
It is no overstatement to say under the present conditions the vaunted road-map for the power sector's development is nowhere near to attainment, even partially . Or, it is clear that targets that were aimed for 2010 under the road-map have been very poorly pursued. The lookout for the next year is also very bleak from watching the dithering and blundering by policy makers and the implementers in this sector.
Let us only look at some statistics to understand the extent of the underperformance. It was planned as part of the road-map that some rental power plants would be built on the highest emergency basis to produce some 1,647 mw of power by 2010. But that target was first revised when the authorities could not complete the processes of calling tender bids and then selecting bidders to give work orders. Thus, the energy adviser early in the current year told the media that the tasks of giving contracts to rental power plant producers would be completed in the present year and the total expected amount of power from these plants would be sent to the national grid by early 2011.
But prior to last Eid-ul-Fitr the Adviser toned down his optimism and warned countrymen about the power crisis only deepening in the months ahead. Recently, the media reported about a meeting between the government authorities and the rental plant builders in which the latter unabashedly informed that most of them have hardly taken any initiatives worth the name and they cannot assure about the pledged amount of power to be produced by the scheduled dates. From this statement of the rental plant producers, one can project that government will miss again a vital target to bring a substantial amount of new power to the national grid by 2011 when they will have entered their third year of governance. Thus, what they would be accomplishing in the next two years of their tenure is anybody's guess.
Under the road-map they are committed to getting 8,500 mw from new generation capacities by 2015 . Total output of power is projected to be 11,000 mw from new capacities and the older ones by 2015. But if the road-map is likened to a hill, then it would appear that the implementers of the road map have not even crawled up the foothills not to speak of reaching the summit when they have already wasted one-third of their allotted time to reach targets.
What is the situation actually obtaining in the power sector or people's reaction to the issue ? Power stations in different places were attacked by very bitterly resentful people on Tuesday. Such vandalism is taking place intermittently. People seem to be in no mood to listen anymore to hope-building statements from governmental authorities about the power supply situation improving.
In these circumstances, PDB and the Prime Minister has informed that government would very soon sign contracts with 25 more companies for power production. But given the flop record of the earlier 15 companies, people are no longer going to be assured that the next 25 companies would be doing any better than their predecessors. There could be some assurance, if the authorities in charge either demonstrated their competence or otherwise made transparent their hard resolve to supervise things so that the selected bidders would be obliged to carry out their tasks in time. But this has clearly not been the case.
According to the Awami League's election time manifesto, they are pledge bound to produce at least 7,000 mw of power by 2010. But 2010 is coming to a close and the highest production record these days, on average, is some 4,000 mw only when the total effective demand, even conservatively, is some 6,000 mw. Therefore, the hard reality is that the country is reeling under a power deficit of at least 2,000 mw when two years of this government have passed and the policy planners have been making all kinds of fruitless suggestions that a substantial abatement of the power crisis is just round the corner.
Experts are of the opinion that government could realistically address the power situation and get the benefits by now if it decided to go after thorough repairing, overhauling and rehabilitation of the ageing existing power plants. 24 such plants are known to be lying dysfunctional or nearly half of the established capacities of 58 plants in the public sector. If the option was taken to repair these plants and these tasks could probably be carried out faster and more reliably given past experiences of such works, then about 3,812 mw could be added to the grid by now.
But the government is seen trying in vain to produce extra power through building new generation capacities and also embarking on a costly or non cost efficient venture to import a meager amount of power from India. But it could get significantly better results if it undertook on its own a crash programme to make fully operational the old power plants.