Anisul Islam Noor :
About 70 to 90 percent posts of power sector entities at decision-making level are occupied by non-technical civil officials though the sector’s jobs are technical in character.
As a result, sometimes decisions are delayed, and sometimes weak and wrong decisions are taken ignoring opinions of technical personnel, Power Development Board (PDB) sources said.
There are seven entities in power sector of which 70 to 90 percent board members are senior civil administrators as ex-officio.
As for example, the newly formed board of Power Grid Company of Bangladesh Limited (PGCB), comprises 12 members of which the number of technical hand is just one. Principal Secretary of the Prime Minister’s Office Abul Kalam Azad is the chairman of the board.
Naturally, the board cannot take appropriate decisions in time, or delay in decision making about highly sensitive issues and thereby linger implementation time.
There are 12 members in the board of directors of Ashuganj Power Station Company of which four are electronic engineers, while eight are BCS cadres (Administration). Power Divisions’ Additional Secretary Anower Hossain is the chairman of the Board.
Similar scenario hits Dhaka Electricity Supply Company Limited (DESCO). Ahmad Kaikaus, Additional Secretary of Power Division, is Chairman of the company. There is one engineer only in the Board of Directors compared with 10 from the non-technical cadres.
The power sector’s engineer of those entities claimed that their many important development proposals had been dismissed by the majority non-technical members.
The government allocated Tk16,503 crore for the Power Division in current fiscal to implement 65 projects. But 50 percent of the projects are still lying idle although about two months of the new fiscal elapsed by this time.
Power sector expert Professor Shamsul Alam said, the power sector entities and its development projects could not make any expected progress despite getting huge allocation. All these happen because the majority non-technical hands supersede the minority technical members in the boards’ decision making.
He said, the PDB and the other power plants have the capacity of generating about 10000 mw of electricity daily, but it has not yet been materialized due to non-technical members’ failure to implement some decisions.
Power Division Secretary Monowar Islam said, “Technical hands are not built overnight, It takes time. Still we have been working to increase the number of technical hands at the decision level.
Technical officials are involved with field level supervision and monitoring existing service and development projects, he said.
