Hours-long power cut and sweltering heat are disrupting daily life across Bangladesh, exposing the six-month-old BNP government to mounting public anger and opposition criticism as officials concede the crisis could persist for at least another week.
Opposition accuses government of “irresponsibility”
Mr. Parwar also flagged the absence of long-term planning in power-sector management. The National Citizen Party (NCP) also weighed in, with its convenor and Chief Whip of the Opposition, Nahid Islam, saying the current power and energy crisis stemmed from a lack of planning and indecision in energy procurement. Mr.
In a statement on Thursday (August 13) evening, Jamaat secretary-general Mia Golam Parwar said gas supply on Wednesday (August 12) had stood at just 2.03 billion cubic feet against demand of 3.8 billion cubic feet, and blamed the crisis on government’s “mismanagement, inefficiency, lack of foresight, corruption in various institutions and politicisation.
Jamaat-e-Islami, the main Opposition party, accused the BNP-led government of failing to take “effective” steps to resolve the crisis, calling it a sign of the administration’s “irresponsibility” towards the public. Islam alleged that although the BNP had come to power promising a government of the people, what was actually taking shape was a “government of oligarchs.”
Abdur Rahman (32), a resident from Kamalnagar, a rural upazila in the southern district of Lakshmipur, said the power cuts had become so relentless that residents could no longer plan their day around them. It cut out four times today alone,” he said According to officials, the country’s total gas supply fell to around 2,100 million cubic feet per day (mmcfd) against a demand of roughly 3,800 mmcfd. Domestic gas fields contributed about 1,630 mmcfd, while two floating LNG terminals supplied up to 410 mmcfd — the lowest combined supply since a July 21 fire disabled the U.S.-owned Excelerate Energy terminal.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s morning, noon or night, the electricity simply won’t stay. The crisis is not confined to the countryside.
We’re lucky if it lasts an hour before vanishing for the next ten,” he told The Hindu . The blackouts, he said, showed little mercy even after dark, cutting out in the middle of the night without warning and staying off for hours. Bijoy Talukdar, who works for a private firm in Dhaka and lives in the capital’s Moghbazar area, said he had assumed the outages afflicting his relatives in rural areas would spare the city.
“The power was gone for three to four hours on Thursday, right in the heart of the city.
