The whole country is now reeling with an unprecedented load-shedding. In this hot and humid season, one can hardly pass time with cooling electronic appliances such as a fan or an air conditioner. Besides, the other emergency household work as well as crucial industrial production of the country that depend on electricity is also being greatly disrupted due to the present electricity crisis. After days of irregular and long periods of load-shedding that people witnessed for more than a week, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Tuesday assured the nation that the government was thinking of introducing area-based load-shedding for a specific time each day.
It is surprising that this assurance had to formally come from the prime minister. When people involved in power generation and supply knew for sure that the country would have to face this electricity crisis, could not they introduce this planned load-shedding when they started this measure of saving electricity, or fuel for that matter? Load-shedding is no new experience for the country and we do not believe that the relevant people do not know how to manage the power crisis by a programme of planned load shedding. The indiscriminate load-shedding of the past week shows the callous indifference of the managers of electricity of the country towards the people’s sufferings!
The prime minister also said that the rise in fuel oil price in the global market is the reason for the present power generation crisis. This is the inevitable fallout of Covid-19 pandemic and Russian invasion of Ukraine. As a consequence, the value of taka has greatly depreciated against the dollar. Since Bangladesh has to import fuel oil for power generation, as the foreign reserves are gradually thinning, Bangladesh Bank does not feel it safe to spend more dollars for costly fuel. This is indeed a step in the right direction. But what is about those stories of ‘development’ that we routinely hear from the government ministers? The truth is the economy of Bangladesh is still so vulnerable, because of gross mismanagement and massive corruption, that it is now virtually grappling to cope with a remote war of which Bangladesh is no part.
Therefore, the government should now stop telling people the fictitious stories of development and manage the present crisis in a serious and professional manner. As far as economising the cost of fuel is concerned, the policy makers should immediately separate the unnecessary or less necessary areas of fuel spending from what is urgent or necessary and save the costly fuel. The private electricity consumers should also be mindful about the present fuel/electricity crisis and positively become austere in their electricity use.
