‘Man not technical fault’ responsible for October 4 blackout, few identified: Nasrul

Staff Reporter :
The blackout on October 4 was not the result of technical fault, but of men’s irresponsibility. The department concerned has already identified some people who were responsible for the massive power outage in some parts of the country including capital city Dhaka.
‘Stern action will be taken against those people who were involved with mismanagement for the massive power failure in the national grid on October 4. We have already identified some people responsible for the incident and it was actually man’s fault,” State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid has said on Friday night during a talk show of Deutsche Welle moderated by Khaled Muhiuddin. He, however, said that the government will take action by Sunday against the responsible persons for not following instructions properly. “We will sack them and action will also be taken against officials of power transmission company too,” he added.
“The blackout occurred due to failure of BPDB’s load management. The demand for load and the production that was greater than the demand for production. All concerned including DESCO officials were asked to cut down, otherwise there will be interruption and frequency will be disturbed, which accordingly the same thing happened. They didn’t pay heed to guideline. As a result, blackout swept,” the State Minister said.
Earlier on October 4, about 50 per cent of population of Bangladesh were left reeling in the dark without any electricity when a major power crisis hit the country and the major blackout in the country left over 130 million people in the country without electricity for 6-7 hours.
On the day, people started to look for alternatives to continue their work as the nation was left in the dark. While market vendors lit candles and diners at restaurants ate food prepared by candlelight, many offices across cities were shut down due to the outage.
Power transmission failed in the eastern part of the country as all power plants tripped and electricity was cut in Dhaka and other big cities including Chattogram, Sylhet, Khulna, Rajshahi and Mymensingh divisions.