BANGLADESH

The government on Monday said power cuts will last only half an hour in Ramadan to ease public woes.

Currently, the people have to remain without power one hour on average once the power supply goes off.

Prime Minister's Power and Energy Advisor Tawfiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury said after a meeting the government will try to ensure uninterrupted power supply during Sehri and Iftar and during Tarabi prayers.

The average daily power production will rise by 600 megawatts (MWs), he told the meeting, just a week to Ramadan.

"If necessary, we will produce around 6,500 megawatts of electricity against the demand of 6,000 during Ramadan," Chowdhury said.

He, however, said around 6,300 MWs of electricity would be sufficient to meet the demands if the consumers use it wisely.

According to government statistics, the daily demand has been limited to around 6,500 MWs through 'Demand Side Management' though the real demand is almost 7,500 MWs.

Power Development Board (PDB) says the daily power production was 6,055 MWs against the demand of 6,100 MWs on Sunday.

PDB on Mar 22 set a new record of electricity generation by feeding 6,066 MWs to the national grid.

The prime ministerial advisor said the Power Division faced a few problems in distributing electricity in some regions although the production was more than it was last year.

He said the authorities had been directed to ensure uninterrupted power supply especially during azan times in Ramadan.

Chowdhury urged the consumers to use power wisely and said, "I have requested the authorities of the industries to shut their operations during Sehri and Iftar and during Tarabi prayers."

"I have also requested the shop owners to use electricity more economically," he added.

He said the incumbent government inked several agreements to build 56 power plants under both private and public management and added that 29 of those plants had started operations.

According to PDB, the daily power production increased by 3,500 MWs due to installation of new plants during the tenure of the incumbent government.

bill payment through SMS

The consumers of three of the 64 Palli Bidyut Samity (rural electrification associations) will be able to pay their bills through SMS from Sunday.

These are Dhaka Palli Bidyut Samity-2, Gazipur Palli Bidyut Samity and Cox's Bazar Palli Bidyut Samity.

Teachers at the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) have threatened to resign en masse unless the Vice-Chancellor and Pro-Vice-Chancellor leave by Sunday.

The teachers, demonstrating for quite some time now, took the decision at a general meeting of their association on Monday afternoon. The meeting that lasted for two and a half hours starting at 4pm was held at the Civil Engineering Building with more than 250 educators in attendance.

Former Director of Students Welfare Prof Aminul Hoque said the meeting also decided to stage demonstration for two hours starting 11am every day.

He said they would be collecting signatures from teachers until Sunday in a campaign to force the duo to resign. He said they will resign en masse if their demand was not met by then.

According to him, over 250 teachers agreed to resign at the meeting by signing a declaration at the meeting.

Students began contacting their teachers after a rumour swirled at the campus in the afternoon that the agitating teachers were withdrawing their strike. They requested them not to withdraw the programme.

Later, the teachers' association leader Prof Humayun Kabir announced on the loudspeaker that they would not backtrack on their demand.

A Chinese company, incorporated in Australia, is keen to build the Padma bridge with a financing option that look better than that of the traditional multilateral lenders led by the World Bank.

"The company will provide 70 percent of the $2.9 billion required for the project without any interest," a senior official of the Economic Relations Division told the bdnews24.com after reviewing a proposal presented last week.

Asked, Communications Minister Obaidul Quader neither denied nor confirmed the development. "I shall not speak about this Padma bridge project and not go beyond what the Prime Minister has said."

Quader told bdnews24.com: "I can talk about the Second Padma Bridge."

World Bank's $1.2 billion loan bears 0.75 percent service charge while Asian Development Bank would have charged less than one percent for its promised $ 615 million.

"The great thing about the Chinese proposal is it is interest-free, quality would be ensured and the government will not need to spend foreign currency for the project," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because there was no official decision to make the offer public.

"The 30 percent of the project cost would be financed by the government in local currency as lots of materials would be procured domestically."

"The company will form a consortium of three companies for main construction, river training and rail link and it would complete the entire work in less than three years," the official said.

In the original project proposal based on which the WB-led donor consortium agreed to fund the project, the bridge construction is supposed to take five years to complete.

The cancellation of the World Bank loan has made the Padma Bridge project uncertain, and the government is desperately looking for other financing options.

The bridge, an election pledge of the Awami League government, will connect Dhaka with 16 south western districts, home to about 60 million people, is estimated to contribute 0.6 per cent to the economy.

Last week, top ERD officials heard senior representatives from the Australia-based company with such details of the proposal as the plan to widen the road to six lanes instead of the originally proposed four lanes.

"It could be a blessing in disguise," the official said.

"In the presentation, we asked the company representatives about ensuring the quality and they said that they wouldn't have any problem if Bangladesh appointed an independent monitoring agency to keep an eye on their work," the official said.

"But the government will have to make separate arrangement for paying the independent body as the cost will not be included in the $2.9 billion that the Chinese are talking about," the official explained.

After the bridge opened to traffic, the government would pay the loan amount in the following 20 years with the earning from the bridge, the official added.