The Awami League in its election manifesto for the upcoming 10th parliamentary polls, scheduled for January 5 next year, has made a commitment that if elected; it would ensure power supply to every household in the country withinfive years.
However, looking at the government’srecord of implementing power projects during its tenure, and after talking to an expert, the target seems unachievable.
Currently, the country’s electricity coverage reaches about 10 crore people, or 62% of the total population.
“Supply of electricity will be ensured to every household over the next five years through mid and long-term programmes formulated and executed by the Awami League.”
Back in 2009, when the AL-led grand alliance government assumed the office, power generation capacity of the country was only 4,942MW, which increased by almost 106% to reach 10,264MW this December.
In its latest manifesto, the AL claimed that it would develop the country’s power generation capacity to 16,000MW within 2016, and to 24,000MW within 2021. To achieve this, deals will be signed with neighbouring countries of India, Nepal and Bhutan in addition to the increase in the power generation capacities inside Bangladesh.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, while reading out the manifesto yesterday, said if elected, the AL government would see through the work at the Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant (RNPP) and the coal-based power project at Rampal.
In comparison to the greater power generation capacity, however, distribution lines were extended by only 11% (from 260,369km to 299,852km) during the same period, according to the Power Division.
Meanwhile, overloaded transformers has made the situation worse. Five distribution companies under the Power Division have a total of 690,257 transformers, of which, 135,287 transformers were currently overloaded, according to the Power division.
Prof Ijaz Hossain of the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (Buet) told the Dhaka Tribune: “Though the generation capacity of the country has increased significantly, there was little effort to bring more communities under the supply chain.
“If the obstacles, including, slow expansion of distribution lines, overloaded transformers, and shortages of substationscould not be overcome, the commitment made by the AL would be difficult if not impossible to keep.”
He observed that technically, 90% of the population could not be brought under the conventional grid, given the varying terrain of the country. “Only a 65% of the total land mass can be brought under the grid because of water bodies and hilly areas,” Prof Ijaz said.
In its manifesto for the next elections, the AL has reinstated its previous call to put an emphasis on the use of coal to generate electricity.
However, the government took nearly five years to formulate a coal policy while a report on extracting coal was only finalised by an expert committee one year ago. In the meantime, the AL claimed it would install at least three million solar panels to help its move towards renewable energy sources.
Though the government formed the Sustainable and Renewable Energy Development Authority (Sreda), which has an ambitious plan of producing 800MW of electricity by 2015, there has been little progress at the organisation.
AL renewed its old commitment to bring the Northern and Western districts of the country under gas supply, although there has been no visible progressunder the current government.
“The work to supply gas to the rest of the districts in the Northern and Westernregionsof the country will continue,” the AL manifesto reads.
The government had suspended giving new gas connections to residential consumers for three years citing supply shortages wich was was lifted this May.
Prof Ijaz said: “It will not be possible to supply gas to the districts stipulated in the manifesto due to a shortage of gas.”
