Nasrul Hamid Bipu, state minister for power and energy, yesterday claimed in parliament that there was not a single second of power outage in the country at present.
“There is no load-shedding, even for a second. We have to disrupt electricity supply sometimes for maintenance, which should not be called load-shedding,” Nasrul said in reply to a supplementary question from Awami League lawmaker Talukdar Mohammad Yunus.
Responding to another question from Didarul Alam, the state minister said the government had outlined various measures to free the country from load-shedding and ensure power facilities for all over the next seven years.
“At present, some 34 power plants, with 884mw capacity, are under construction and these plants will start (operation) in phases between 2014 and 2018,” Nasrul said.
However, the government had no plan to set up new rental power plants, he said in reply to Kazi Feroz Rashid.
According to government estimations, the demand for electricity peaks during the Boro (rice) irrigation and summer seasons from March to May. The power demand during this period is estimated to be around 7,500MW.
The state minister claimed that there was no increase in electricity production in the last 42 years, but production had now surged to 11,000MW, from only 3,000MW decades ago.
Replying to Morshed Alam, Nasrul said 62% of the country’s population had access to electricity supply.
“Of the total population, 62% has been brought under power facilities,” he said.
The junior minister said the government was working towards providing electricity to the rest of the country and hoped to ensure power for all by 2021.