Bangladesh faces power blackout after grid failure
Dhaka: At least 130 million people in Bangladesh were without power on Tuesday aternoon ater a grid failure caused widespread blackouts, the government’s power utility company said.
More than 80 per cent of the country was hit by the sudden outage shortly ater 2 pm local time, according to the Power Development Board.
Apart from some locations in Bangladesh’s northwest, “the rest of the country is without power,” agency spokesman Shamim Ahsan told AFP.
Ahsan said 130 million people or more were without electricity and it remained unclear what had caused the fault.
“It is still under investigation,” he said, adding that a technical malfunction was the likely reason.
Junior technology minister Zunaid Palak said on Facebook that power would be restored by 8 pm in the capital Dhaka, itself home to more than 22 million people.
Bangladesh has suffered a major power crisis in recent months as a result of higher global energy prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Public anger has intensified over lengthy blackouts in the South Asian nation, which is struggling to pay for enough imported diesel and gas to meet electricity demand.
Bangladesh last witnessed a major unscheduled blackout in November 2014, when around 70 per cent of the country went without power for nearly 10 hours.
Engineers were trying to determine where and why the glitches happened and it could take hours to restore the system, he said.
Bangladesh’s recent impressive economic growth has been threatened by power shortages since the government suspended operations of all diesel-run power plants to reduce costs for imports as prices have soared.
The diesel-run power plants produced about 6% of Bangladesh’s power generation, so their shutdowns cut output by up to 1,500 megawats.
Earlier this month, Faruque Hassan, president of Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, said that the situation is so serious that garment factories are without power now for around 4 to 10 hours a day.