Govt’s failure to give power despite huge investment is appalling

A colossal amount of money has gone down the drain. The present government reportedly spent $3,900 crore in the power sector between 2009 and 2022, but the country has remained a heavily power-starved nation still. In the cities including the capital as well as towns, people are witnessing area-wise six-to-eight hours’ load-shedding in a day and in the countryside power is not available half the day.
The money invested was spent on increasing the country’s power generation capacity to 24,143 MW, mostly for rental and quick-rental plants with their capacity charges; but as the country now does not have dollars, the power is produced at almost half the capacity. Recently, the government shutdown the coal-fired Pyra Power Plant because it could not buy the fossil fuel, but it blamed the unavailability of coal in the international market for the plant’s shutdown. It was a lie.
With unchecked money laundering and wrong policies of power generation that has helped the government’s crony businesspeople to earn undue money, the nation is reeling under the worst ever power crisis at present that has pushed the people, industries and the environment to the brink of collapse. Interestingly enough, when the whole country suffers for power, the area belonging to the state minister of power and energy is reportedly getting uninterrupted power supply for about the last one month. People like him are there to have the benefit of being in the government.
Why was the government so desperate to increase the country’s power generation capacity in the first place? The very presence of the indemnity law that has protected the power investment with special provisions in power purchase agreements such as capacity charge tells us that the government is there to serve its own businesspeople not the common people. The invested money has been taken away by them.
The government has up until now paid about $9 billion in capacity charge to private investors and the Power Development Board made a loss of more than Tk 1 lakh crore. The government has paid over Tk 1 lakh crore in power subsidy since 2010.
This is how the public money was squandered rendering the country’s economy inwardly hollow. The power consumers are now buying electricity from the government with much heightened prices but not getting it. Despite the massive failure in power sector investment, the relevant people in the government have the courage to show their face in public.