Power outage with Mercury rising: Industries, households in Savar, Gazipur hit hard

Industrial production and the lives of residents have been hit hard in Savar, Dhamrai and Gazipur areas by a sudden increase in load shedding in electricity supply amid rising temperature. 

The industry owners and residents of the areas have reported that they have been experiencing five to seven hours power outage daily for the last few days. 

Molla Mohammad Abul Kalam Azad, senior general manager of Dhaka Palli Bidyut Samiti-3, told The Business Standard that the recent surge in temperature has led to a rise in electricity demand. 

"The peak power demand reached 288 megawatts at noon today (2 April), surpassing the available supply of 220 megawatts. Consequently, load shedding has become necessary," he said.

Nilufar Yasmin, a private university student and a resident of Savar's South Namagenda, told TBS, "We face load shedding for 6 to 7 hours throughout the day. And each time the outage lasts up to two hours. It is happening even late at night."

"The peak power demand reached 288 megawatts at noon today [2 April], surpassing the available supply of 220 megawatts. Consequently, loadshedding has become necessary."

Molla Mohammad Abul Kalam Azad, senior general manager of Dhaka Palli Bidyut Samiti-3

"It has become clear that the situation will be worse in the coming days. Our studies are being hampered severely with the power cut after the evening or at night," she added. 

Similarly, Shamsujjoha Mithu, a resident of Ashulia's Dendabar area, said they have been enduring load shedding for five to six hours day and night over the past two days. 

With the sweltering heat on one side and prolonged power cuts on the other, the suffering is unbearable, he added.

Furthermore, frequent power outages are not only impacting local residents but also hindering production in industries in the region.

Owners of several tanneries in the BSCIC Tannery Industrial Estate in Hemayetpur also complained about power outages lasting half of the day. 

This situation forced them to rely on generators to sustain factory operations, leading to a 20%-30% increase in production costs and necessitating overtime for workers, they said.

"We get electricity only for 4 to 5 hours and the load shedding grips the rest of the day. The work that I was supposed to finish in 8 hours, takes 12 hours," Masud Chowdhury, the owner of Sadar Tannery, told TBS over the phone.  

"Our production cost is increasing by an average of 20% to 30% for supplying backup power with generators and paying overtime to our workers for processing leather within the stipulated time," he added. 

RAK Liton, Company Secretary of Fashion Globe Group, an export-oriented garment manufacturing company, told TBS, "The situation is so bad that we have calculated load shedding for 18 to 20 times a day for the last few days."

"As a result, we're counting direct production losses of Tk 5 to Tk6 lakh per day. Our production activities have been severely disrupted and the cost of production has increased several times," he added. 

Palli Bidyut official Abul Kalam Azad said they were trying to limit load shedding within an hour.

Several areas of Savar, Ashulia and Dhamrai are under the jurisdiction of Dhaka the Palli Bidyut Samiti-3.

On the other hand, Professor Md Mashfiqul Hasan, senior general manager of Dhaka Palli Bidyut Samiti-1, told TBS that their demand peaked at around 400 MW at noon and they were experiencing an average load shedding of up to 5%.

Ashulia, Chandra and Kaliakoir of Gazipur are under the jurisdiction of Dhaka Palli Bidyut Samiti-1.