The ministry for energy and power on Thursday drew fire from lawmakers in parliament over its failure to improve the power supply situation.
Senior ruling party lawmaker, Tofail Ahmed, questioned who was actually in command of the ministry.
'Nobody knows who runs the ministry, the adviser or the [state] minister. I don't know who is in command of this ministry,' said Tofail, also a member on Awami League's advisory council, in presence of the leader of the house, Sheikh Hasina, who also holds the portfolio of energy, power and mineral resources ministry.
Tofail alleged that the prime minister's power adviser Tawfiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury did not even receive phone calls as lawmakers thumped tables and shouted 'shame, shame'.
He vented his anguish while talking on nagging power crisis in his constituency and the ministry's indifference to a proposal from a Malaysian company for setting up a 213megawatts plant.
'There had been no power crisis in Bhola when the entire country was experiencing acute power shortages as there was a 34.5 megawatts plant in the district. But for past one month, Bhola has been in total dark after the plant was closed,' he said.
'Now the people of the district cannot even charge their mobile phones and have their iftar properly…The plant is closed but nobody is concerned,' he said.
Tofail said Bhola had plenty of gas and a Malaysian firm offered the lowest prices in the
tender to build a 213MW power plant in the district but the ministry failed to negotiate the selling price of gas and buying price of power from it in seven months.
'They told me that it would not be possible for them to set up the plant as the value of US dollar has shot up,' he said.
Zainul Abedin of Meherpur said his district was deprived of power during the past BNP-Jamaat regime and the situation has not changed after passage of two and a half years of Awami League government. He asked the state minister to provide a data of power demand, production and its district-wise share.
'As a lawmaker I do not know who is to be asked for remedies of the irregularities in power supply,' he said.
Abdul Mannan of Bogra lamented the poor supply network of gas in northern districts and asked the state minister to say it clearly whether he would be able to supply gas in next two and a half years of Awami League's tenure.
Lawmaker Nurul Islam BSc wondered how a few companies in Chittagong were getting power supply at lesser prices.
In response to a question, Enamul said that Tk 297 crore power bills remained outstanding till May of the current fiscal and gas bills outstanding with different government organisations till June this year amounted to Tk 572 crore.
He told Nasimul Alam Chowdhury that the government has plans to produce 24,000megawatts of power by 2021 and tender process had begun for setting up 29 power stations to produce 3,829 megawatts of electricity.
He also said the government was also planning to supply liquid petroleum gas in cylinders to areas out of gas network.
The state minister told Mujibul Huq that the government had no plan to stop selling gas to cars.
Source : Nge Age
No comments:
Post a Comment