THE government has taken a renewed move to hike the electricity tariff again when the impact of the recent tariff hike implemented three months ago is still haunting users how to adjust it with their expenditure budgets. A national daily on Wednesday reported that the state-run Power Development Board (PDB), following a recent instruction from the Power and Energy Ministry is now preparing fresh proposal for electricity tariff hike. It looks like madness without taking into account the suffering of the people and we protest the move and ask the government to look at the perils of the users against frequent rise in power tariff, this time within three months. As it appears, the government is buying electricity from private sector at high cost under politically solicited deals and users have been made scapegoat to pay for it for the benefit of few. They are mostly party men wielding big influence on the government. But the impact of frequent tariff hike on trade, commerce and productivity is being overlooked as also the suffering of domestic users making of poor and middle-income people.
Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) increased power tariff on August 17 this year by 4.93 percent with effect from September 1. At the same time, it increased the average prices of natural gas by 26.29 percent. Estimates show that the Awami League government has raised the retail power tariff in eight phases from Tk 3.76 to Tk 6.33 per unit from March 2010 to September 2015. At bulk level, it has moreover increased price in seven phases by 106 percent from March 2011 to September 2015.
As it appears we have a government, which is not transparent in spending public money and also lacks accountability to the people inasmuch as it is supportive to vested interest groups and the bureaucracy. People are not organized and even denied of voting rights to protest to make the government accountable. So it can do anything it wants.
According to the proposal, PDB has suggested 6 percent hike in the bulk electricity price to reduce annual subsidy to Tk 4,000 crore from January next year from Tk 6,000 crore now when energy experts, consumer rights organizations and political leaders including the left democratic parties had denounced the previous price hike as unjustified and totally unwarranted. The government is making profits from electricity sales and the cost of fuel to run power plants have also more than halved in recent years. So there is no justification to increase the tariff citing the cost of fuel.
The fact is that the power sector is home to huge misuse of public money in high corruptions, misappropriation of public funds and by way of underhand deals. The system loss is also high though suppressed, as electricity pilferage facilitated by party men under the cover of trade union protection is enormous.
As it appears consumers protection under this government has no place as it is serially increasing power tariff for funding a huge budget to appease bureaucracy. The government must not feel free to extort money for its inefficient management.
