The blackout from two days ago brought the whole nation to a complete standstill. For nearly eight hours, Bangladesh was cloaked in darkness to a major disruption in the electrical supply brought forth by a collapse of the national grid.
While the country was gradually brought back to life, it necessitates asking: Exactly what led to this incident taking place?
Even though the state-owned Power Grid Company of Bangladesh has recently announced an internal probe to identify the reasons behind the national grid collapse, given how the last major power disruption, that occurred almost eight years ago, found nothing conclusive in terms of its origins, perhaps relegating such issues to internal investigations is not the way to go.
If there is any credence to the belief that the power outage originated somewhere in the Ashuganj-Sirajganj interconnecting transmission line, it needs to be investigated without delay.
Bangladesh is going through unprecedented times in its history, with the after-effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and the global energy crisis brought on by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the administration has done a lot to stave off their combined negative effects.
But given that the nation is already undergoing heavy load-shedding that results in various parts of the nation not having electricity for hours upon hours every day, major, unexplained power outages do nothing to quell public fears surrounding this issue.
This blackout cannot be swept under the rug. If the national grid collapsing was the result of negligence, those responsible need to be brought to light.
Bangladesh has come far too long in its development trajectory for us to slide back into the dark days of the past.
