THE health ministry asking hospitals and healthcare providers across the country to keep hand fans in stock for use during power outages shows the hollowness of the often-vaunted energy security. The instruction came in a national guideline issued by the ministry on May 5 for safeguarding the health and well-being of people during extreme heat, which has already killed over a dozen people and forced the authorities to shut down educational institutions for about 10 days. Since the onset of the summer, power generation has lagged behind demand, resulting in long and frequent hours of power outages. The situation is more acute in rural areas, where power outages are reported to last as long as 16 hours. During the ongoing heatwave, when most parts of the country have experienced temperatures over 40 degrees Celsius, power outages have made the heat more unbearable. Hospital admissions because of illnesses attributable to excessive heat have also increased. And the irony is that the hospitals are struggling to provide proper treatment because of frequent power outages. Frequent power outages have also caused problems for farmers who are struggling to irrigate their farmlands. The situation certainly raises a question as to the sustainability of energy security.
Since 2009, the government has increased power prices by 300 per cent and generation capacity by 500 per cent, yet people do not get uninterrupted power supply. Even though the demand hovers around 14鈥�17GW and the installed power capacity is about 26.84GW, the authorities cannot ensure power as half of the generation capacity remains unused. The unused capacity, moreover, costs the people as the government pays a capacity charge 鈥� a payment that the government must pay whether or not electricity is produced 鈥� to rental and independent power producers. Since 2009, the government has paid Tk 104,000 crore to 82 independent and 32 rental power producers in capacity charges, as the minister of state for power said in parliament in September 2023. The amount is almost the amount of loss incurred by the PDB since 2009. The huge investment in the power sector has not improved the situation much as the power policy is, as different studies show, so flawed and peculiarly designed that it has channelled public money into private pockets and led to a lopsided development. The sector is burdened by an abnormal level of overcapacity, an absurd capacity payment system, and lopsided development. The government has since 2009, when the government resorted to rental and quick rental power plants under the protection of an indemnity law, invested about $33 billion, including about $1 billion in capacity charges, but could not ensure uninterrupted power supply.
The government owes an apology and an explanation to the people. The government must also revisit the power policy and make a course correction. In so doing, the government must withdraw from the irrational capacity charge system, reduce its dependence on imported fuel and invest in gas exploration and renewable energy for power generation.
