The power supply situation in Gazipur, Mymensingh and Netrakona was deteriorating from last Sunday night till Monday afternoon. In these three districts there has been load shedding from 7 to 15 hours. However, the situation has improved in Rajshahi and Rangpur.

News sent by Prothom Alo’s own reporters and representatives from the respective areas:

In Gazipur, from Sunday night till yesterday afternoon, the people suffered due to loadshedding. However, load shedding was slightly less in urban as compared to rural.

Sadar Upazila Bhawal Mirzapur businessman Akram Hossain said that there was no electricity in the area from 4 pm to 7 pm on Sunday. Later at nine o’clock at night there was no electricity again for half an hour. At 11 p.m., the power went out again. Yesterday also there was no continuous electricity from 10 am to 2:30 pm.

Yuvraj Chandra Pal, General Manager (GM) of Gazipur Palli Vidyut Samiti-1 said that the number of factories and offices-courts in Gazipur City Corporation, Kaliakair, Kaliganj and Joydevpur areas is high. Here, against the demand of 462 MW, electricity is available at 225 MW. In this, electricity has to be shut down for seven to eight hours depending on the area.

There has been more than 12 hours of power outage in Netrakona during the day and night in the areas covered by rural electricity. In some areas there is load shedding for up to four hours continuously. Although it is less in cities, load shedding is also happening outside the scheduled time in villages.

Talking to officials of Netrakona Rural Electricity Association and District Electricity Development Board, it is known that there are 666,000 rural electricity consumers in this district. Against the daily demand of 105 MW, electricity is available at an average of 43 to 45 MW. There has been light rain in different upazilas since Sunday morning till 10 am yesterday. It requires less electricity. Despite this, the power outage lasted for 12 to 15 hours.

Biplap Kumar Sarkar, general manager of Netrakona Rural Electricity Association, said, ‘We were asked to schedule 70 percent supply of our demand. Accordingly, we have scheduled three to four hours of load shedding in each area. But now I am not getting half the supply.

Meanwhile, Abul Kashem, a resident of Naopara village in Ishwarganj upazila of Mymensingh said that electricity is not available there for 12 hours day and night. Farooq Ahmed, a resident of Larma village of Tarakanda upazila, said that the electricity went on and off for an hour from yesterday morning to afternoon. He said, recently there is no electricity at night.

Khandkar Shamim Alam, general manager of Palli Vidyut Samiti-3, said that the average demand for the six upazilas of Mymensingh is 88 MW; However, maximum 40 megawatts of electricity is available.

There was no power outage (load shedding) in Rajshahi from last Sunday night to yesterday afternoon. Palli Vidyut Samiti got electricity almost equal to their demand. Again, the demand and supply of Northern Electricity Supply Company (NESCO), which provides electricity in some upazilas including the district headquarters, was the same. However, there has been some load shedding in a couple of areas. Debendranath Tudu (32), a resident of Uchadanga Narayanpur village in Tanore, said that there was no electricity for 5 to 10 minutes on Sunday evening, and the electricity was not available all day yesterday. Champa Begum (35) of Tiorkuri Lakshmipur village in Durgapur said that there was no electricity for more than an hour since 12:30 on Sunday. But there was electricity all day yesterday.

General Manager (GM) of Rajshahi Palli Vidyut Samiti. Ekramul Haque said that their demand was 43 MW at 12 noon on Monday; Supply was also almost the same. Again at 3 pm the demand was 49 MW. By contrast the supply was the same. Due to the rains, the land had to be less irrigated at that time. He said that there was no load shedding for that.

In the last two days in Rangpur, there have been power outages of 15 minutes to half an hour in the city and rural areas. Local people said that earlier this outage was more.