Power shortage rattles Lakshmipur

Across the district, people say they have had three-hour power cuts almost every two hours. Apart from the town, the crisis is worst in the 13 unions of Lakshmipur Sadar, Ramgati and Kamalnagar upazilas and nine unions in Chandraganj. The town’s commercial areas have been the hardest hit. Arun Chandra and Baker Hossain, two traders from Dalalbazar, said since July 30, there has been a regular power cut at 5am that lasts till 10-11am. For the rest of the day power supply comes back for half-an-hour at a time. Traders were suffering due to the lack of electricity, they said. On Thursday, between 5am and 2pm there were four power cuts. Dakkhin Hamchhadi Union’s Awami League leader Nur Nobi Master said for a month now there is no power supply in the evening. Students are the worst victims of this problem, he said. Water supply management officials at the Raipur municipality said because of the frequent power cuts they had been unable to supply water continuously to citizens. Ali Hossain, a journalist from Chandraganj, said in Kamalnagar upazila people were getting no more than four-five hours of power every day. Sources at the Lakshmipur Palli Bidyut Samiti said at present it was only able to provide some 23-27MW of the 50MW demand made by its 2.1 lakh clients across the district. Samiti’s General Manager Shahjahan Kabir said the crisis was being caused by the Chandpur plant which had stopped production. Also, development work was underway at the 33,000 KV transmission lines in the Chownuhani–Lakshmipur local grid. Some warned that discontent was forming among the public and could end up in protests. In October 2014, public anger over power outage turned into a riot as an angry mob attacked the Raipur Palli Bidyut office and set fire to seven vehicles. Locals also blocked roads and seiged Palli Bidyut offices in other parts of the district.