Once known as the powerhouse of Khulna, the district’s Goalpara area has been losing its many power plants one by one – allegedly because of negligence and lack of planning by the authorities concerned.
Previously, the lack of repairs had already resulted in the scrapping of a 56MW floating barge-mounted power plant, and three more diesel-powered 16MW power plants in the area.
Now, Goalpara has also lost two more PDB-run furnace-oil-based power plants – one with 110MW capacity and the other with 60MW.
Recently, the Power Development Board (PDB) made a decision to not overhaul the 110MW plant any more; the plant had been overhauled only four times in the past 31 years. The other 60MW plant had been overhauled five times since it went into operation 42 years ago.
Compared to these two, the nearby 150MW peaking power plant run by North-West Power Generation Co Ltd is set to be overhauled within only two years since it was set up.
Hafizur Rahman, a labour leader at Khulna Bidyut Kendra, claimed that the 110MW plant had lost its production capacity as the thickness of its boilers’ economiser tube, super-heater tube and re-heater tubes had been reduced because of the lack of overhauling. The 60MW plant, meanwhile, had been shut down because of too much vibration on its turbine, Hafizur added.
The 110MW plant has remained closed since November last year, while the 60MW plant suspended its operation in May 2012. Both the plants were set up by a Czech Republic-based company named Skoda Export Co Ltd.
In 2011, the Power Development Board formed a committee to renovate the two plants; but its recommendations were ignored and the 60MW was shut down permanently in 2014.
Meanwhile, for the 110MW plant, a company blacklisted by the PDB was picked as the winner in a tender for its renovation; consequently, the tender was cancelled and a decision was made to re-float the tender.
However, a meeting of the PDB on April 6 decided that there would be no more tenders, scrapping all plans for a future overhauling of the plant.
Sector insiders claimed that the state-owned plants were suffering because there was no proper planning by authorities concerned, a fact which was being exploited by the private power plants.
Sheikh Ashrafuzzaman, head of a platform promoting the development of the Greater Khulna region, blamed the inefficiencies of the state-owned plants’ high-ups for putting the power plants in Khulna out of order.
Protesting the decision of no more overhauling at the plant, workers there have announced a wide range of demonstrations that will begin from tomorrow and continue throughout the week in the area.
