“You have to be economical in using electricity. Hasina, also the country’s power and energy minister, said her government has signed deals with Qatar and Oman to buy fuel and has taken measures to import more coal. “Who would have thought that the temperature would go up to 41 degrees?” she told a meeting arranged by the ruling Awami League party. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Wednesday acknowledged the people’s suffering due to the power cuts and said the intense heatwave has only worsened the situation. Only 49 power plants are running at full capacity while the remaining 51 still under operation are running at half capacity due to fuel shortages, the data showed.Īs a result, the South Asian nation of 170 million people is facing unprecedented load-shedding of about 2,500 megawatts, equivalent to what the country produced in the late 1990s. People collect drinking water from a roadside tap during a countrywide heatwave in Dhaka While the government assured the plant will be operational by the end of this month, a top official at its operating company, the North-West Power Generation Company (NWPGC), who requested anonymity, told Al Jazeera it was “highly unlikely”.Īt least 53 of the country’s 153 power plants have been shut for the past few weeks for maintenance or a lack of fuel due to the dollar shortage, data from the state-owned Power Grid Company of Bangladesh said. The closure of the 1320 MW Payra power plant, the country’s largest, due to a shortage of coal has only compounded the crisis. Officials say the power crisis is likely to linger and could even worsen due to the financial crisis.Īccording to the Bangladesh Bank, the country’s forex stockpile has gone below $30bn for the first time in seven years. A mobile phone salesmen works in the dark at a shopping mall in Dhaka No immediate respite I simply can’t work in this situation,” Ali told Al Jazeera. Overall, we are getting at most eight to nine hours of electricity a day. “Electricity doesn’t stay at a stretch even for two to three hours, and when power cut happens, it lingers on. Electricity in Rangpur is so unstable he has missed deadlines for many of his projects. However, for the past few months, Ali has been ruing his decision. “And Rangpur had both, so it was a no-brainer for me to move there from Dhaka.” So it doesn’t really matter from where I work as long as I have a stable electricity and internet,” Ali told Al Jazeera. “I work online and take work orders mostly from the United States and European clients. Officials at the Bangladesh Meteorological Department said they had not seen such a prolonged heatwave since the country’s independence in 1971.Įarlier this week, operations at Bangladesh’s biggest power plant were suspended as the government is unable to import fuel due to a decline in foreign exchange reserves and the depreciating value of the Bangladeshi taka which depreciated about 25 percent against the US dollar last year.įreelance graphic designer Julfiqar Ali decided to move from Dhaka to Rangpur in northern Bangladesh four years ago not just to avoid the skyrocketing living costs in the capital but also with an urge to get back to the relative tranquillity of his sleepy hometown. Children cool off in the Buriganga River in Dhaka Other cities such as Rangpur recorded a high of 41 degrees Celsius – the highest there since 1958. Tens of thousands of primary and secondary schools have been shut down by the government this week as temperatures surged to more than 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in Dhaka. I wake up many times, drenched in sweat,” he said.Ī crippling power crisis has added to the misery of the Bangladeshis as they reel under the country’s longest heatwave in decades. Now my sleeps are disrupted without a fan. “After a hard, laborious day, I used to get some sleep. “It is not possible to continue doing this in such weather,” he told Al Jazeera.įor the last few weeks, the slum in Dhaka where Rahman lives has hardly had any electricity at night. Dhaka, Bangladesh – Abdur Rahman nearly fainted while pulling his rickshaw under the scorching sun in Bangladesh’s capital city.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |