A survey, conducted by Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), has found that 86.9% people are satisfied with "the improvement of electricity service compared to previous six years" while 13.1% is not satisfied.
Some 29.9% people are somewhat satisfied while 11.2% is highly satisfied, according to the survey.
It also found that in terms of confidence regarding government future plan about electricity development, 79.7% people said "Yes" while 5.6% said "No" and 14.7% people are uncertainty about their opinion.
It found that some 12.1% people across the country use electricity for cooking purpose. According to the survey, the rate is 7% in the rural area, 20% in municipal area and 27.5% in city corporation area.
Thanks to BBS' shortcoming in questionnaire setting that it remained content with the respondents' replies that they use electricity for cooking but offered no details on whether the use is only for microwave oven or for fulltime cooking.
State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid at the survey report release function on Monday admitted that if the detail questions were asked, the answers could be different.
"Such respondents might be users of both electricity and gas for their cooking," he added.
Tawfiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury, the power, energy and mineral resources affairs adviser to the prime minister, defended the BBS survey saying there was no scope for asking detail question about the matter as it was a computer assisted telephonic interviewing (CATI).
Power Division Secretary Ahmad Kaikaus also defended the survey result saying people in both urban and rural areas were using electric home appliances more and more nowadays due to increased economic capacity.
The survey report was released at a press conference at Bidduyt Bhaban in Dhaka on Monday. BBS Director CS Roy presented the report while Power Development Board Chairman Khaled Mahmud, Rural Electrification Board Chairman Maj Gen Moin Uddin and BBS Director General Amir Hossain were present on the occasion.
Financed by the Energy and Power Research Council (EPRC), BBS conducted the survey twice – in October 2016 and February in 2017 – among 14,996 people in both urban and rural areas on a random sampling basis who were rationally selected from a list of 122,427 male and female mobile phone users across the country.
The BBS collected the numbers from six mobile phone operators and the respondents were asked six questions about their electricity use.
BBS official claimed that the survey was conducted in October and February to get response about the power supply situation in peak summer and peak winter.
They, however, agreed with the notion that peak summer time is considered between May to August while peak winter is considered in December-January.
Tuesday, March 18, 2025
