THE Barapukuria coal-fired power plant is going to shut down immediately for an indefinite period as its fuel mysteriously disappeared from a yard. Two units of the plant, with the capacity of 125MW each, have already been turned off. The other unit, with a capacity of 275MW, was waiting for shutdown yesterday. The problem surfaced after the disappearance of 1.42 lakh tonnes of coal, worth about Tk 227 crore, from the BCMCL yard. The series of scams that embraced the government in the years — from reserve heist of central bank and its recent gold adulteration in the vault, loan scam of state-owned banks to several other big-scale corruptions -have remained largely unaddressed. The perpetrators were escaped using political connection. It was certainly a collective failure of the government in protecting public property due to bureaucratic and political dishonesty.
The matter of coal “disappearance” came to light on Monday when a board member of Power Development Board (PDB) visited the mine. At a meeting on June 20 between Petrobangla and PDB officials in the capital, a mine official said coal stock on the yard was around 1.80 lakh tonnes. But in reality, the coal yard was almost empty. Only 10,000 tonnes of coal were found after inspection.
Coal production has been suspended since June 29 to relocate equipment to a new coalface. Production is expected to resume at the end of next month. Power generation would continue at the plant if PDB, which operates the plant, gets enough coal in the meantime. PDB officials have said the coal will be used in Barapukuria plant through rationing system and it would not possible to continue power generation more than one or two days. Petrobangla, which runs the BCMCL, formed a three-member probe body to investigate the coal going missing.
The mine area is secured and it is unimaginable to us how the huge quantity of coal went missing. It was not possible without the involvement of officials concerned.
