Load-shedding to ease significantly soon: Zahed

Prime Minister’s Information and Broadcasting Adviser Dr Zahed Ur Rahman said on Tuesday that load-shedding across the country is expected to ease significantly within a short time.

He said the burden of load-shedding caused by the power shortage was now being distributed relatively evenly between urban and rural areas.

He made the remarks at a press briefing at the Secretariat on the progress of various government activities.

“We are trying to provide you with detailed data on load-shedding. There has been a lot of discussion about fuel. We hope the current level of load-shedding will decrease significantly within a very short time,” Zahed Ur Rahman said.

He said Dhaka had recently experienced load-shedding that was comparatively uncommon in the past.

“Previously, more load-shedding was imposed on rural areas after ensuring power supply in Dhaka. But the current government has decided to share the burden of the crisis among everyone,” he said.

He said there was a policy priority for supplying electricity to major cities because economic activity was higher there.

“However, the government has not adopted a policy of supplying more electricity simply because influential people live in cities. Everyone has to share the hardship during a crisis,” he said.

“Since the government has taken this decision, everyone will share the burden of load-shedding. That is why we are now seeing load-shedding in Dhaka,” he said.

Zahed Ur Rahman said data would also be released on the extent of load-shedding during the previous Awami League government and the interim government, despite claims of uninterrupted power supply at the time.

“I hope to provide you with that data next week. I am working on it. It will show how much load-shedding there was at that time and how many megawatts were shed. A large part of the load-shedding then was imposed on villages and remote areas. We have moved away from that approach,” he said.

Explaining the reasons behind the power shortage, he said the current crisis had been caused by fuel shortages, sudden mechanical failures at power plants, maintenance work, limitations in the transmission grid and rapidly rising demand.

Outlining the government's measures to tackle the crisis, the adviser said load-shedding was being coordinated to an appropriate extent in areas under the Dhaka Power Distribution Company (DPDC) and Dhaka Electric Supply Company (DESCO) to keep load-shedding in rural areas at a tolerable level and avoid prolonged outages in any particular area.