Power crisis

It is not right. Ten people can share one electric lamp (light or electric bulb)

in a room. But people in ten separate dark rooms cannot share one light.

So we can reach a conclusion. Urbanisation is the main cause behind the rise in demand for electricity. It is a big issue for a developing country.

Developed countries generate electricity from many sources.

We must try to generate enough resources and well-developed technology for reaching that stage. We see they are getting a huge amount of power from hydro-electricity projects and nuclear projects.

The third world depends only on natural resources. For example: hydrocarbon, natural gas & little number of barrages (a dam).

Many apartments are being built in the city, district towns or even rural areas. They need electricity to live there. Power consumption related goods are easily available in our country. The prices of electrical goods (TV, VCR, DVD, Refrigerator, Computer, AC, washing machine and drying machine etc.) are not raised.

Most of the luxurious goods (directly or indirectly) are electrical. Our

middle class (according to Bangladeshi life style or level) people are using those appliances in apartments 24 hours a day. Many big companies have launched instalment payment system for those. Bank loan is easily available for this kind of purchase.

We have seen on television that village farmers are drying crops by an electric machine. As far as we know, our farmers used sunlight for that specific task in the past. They can still use sunlight because we are passing through a power crisis.

Many industrial companies have expanded their business. For example, our

garment industry has grown big. Many garments companies remain open till night. They are consuming a huge amount of power from the

national grid.

The garment workers called strike (stoppage of work ) and resorted to violent demonstration. The strike was a legitimate one since the workers have many demands unfulfilled. Curiously enough, load-shedding was much less troublesome on those tow days.

Now it was a big opportunity for DESA & PDB. It was an opportunity of their database makers to calculate the power requirements of garment industries.

We want to ask them (PDB & DESA): How much electricity are they (registered and unregistered garment factories ) taking from the national grid? What amount of electric bills are they paying for this?

They (electric division) are very much worried about arrears. They disconnected lines for non-payment of bills. But this is not being done in a systematic way.

What is the news about pre-paid metre ? We want to know its update story. We know pre-paid metre was set as a replacement of old metre. Chittagong city was the first test field of this project. It was introduced to stop power pilferage. We want to know the latest developments. How much benefit they are getting from the new system?