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🇧🇩 Bangladesh /Energy & Infrastructure

Dhaka Shares Power-Cut Burden With Rural Areas, Adviser Says

From Daily Star · () English

Translated from English and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

News Named sources Ongoing story
  • Bangladesh has adjusted load-shedding in parts of Dhaka to redirect electricity to rural areas and other parts of the country.
  • Adviser Zahed Ur Rahman said the shortages stem from fuel constraints, power-plant faults and maintenance, transmission and grid limits, and rising demand.
  • The government expects outages to decline substantially soon and plans to release comparative load-shedding data next week.

Dhaka residents are now sharing a power-shortage burden that previously fell more heavily on rural communities, according to Prime Minister’s Adviser Zahed Ur Rahman.

Those of us who live in Dhaka are probably experiencing load-shedding now, which we used to see less at one time.

— Zahed Ur RahmanThe prime minister’s adviser described the increased outages now affecting the capital.

The government has ordered adjustments to load-shedding in areas served by the Dhaka Power Distribution Company and Dhaka Electric Supply Company. Electricity saved in the capital is being redirected to rural areas and other parts of Bangladesh, Zahed said at a briefing at the Secretariat.

The change is improving supplies for industries and other important consumers outside Dhaka while reducing long and frequent outages in rural areas. Zahed said Dhaka still needs more electricity because large cities have greater economic activity, not because powerful people live there.

The tendency was to provide electricity to people in Dhaka and increase load-shedding much more in rural areas. You have seen that this government has decided that people will share the crisis.

— Zahed Ur RahmanHe explained the government’s decision to distribute the power shortage more evenly.

He said the shortage resulted from fuel problems, power-plant faults and maintenance, transmission and grid constraints, and increased demand. Demand has risen as economic activity picked up following the formation of a democratic government, he said.

What happened then was that it was completely pushed onto villages or remote areas. We have moved away from that. We hope the people will understand this.

— Zahed Ur RahmanHe contrasted the current policy with earlier approaches to load-shedding.

Zahed said load-shedding had affected the country under both the previous Awami League government and the interim government, with villages and remote areas carrying most of the burden. He is collecting data from those periods and expects to provide figures in megawatts next week. The government does not expect the current situation to last long and hopes outages will fall sharply within a short period.

We hope that the amount of load-shedding we have will come down quite a lot within a very short period.

— Zahed Ur RahmanHe expressed confidence that the shortages would ease soon.
About this summary

Originally published by Daily Star in English. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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