'People in rural areas suffer from 8 to 12hrs of load shedding'

Parliament’s opposition chief whip Mujibul Haque said people in rural areas have to suffer from 8 to 12 hours of load shedding a day.

“The government says our production capacity has reached 28,000 megawatts, if so where has the electricity gone?” Mujibul Haque said while speaking at the parliament session on Sunday.

He said the people of Bangladesh are facing multifarious problems but power crises and road accidents are the two most serious ones.

Mujibul said people in his constituency (Kishoreganj’s Karimganj and Tarail upazilas) suffer from five hours of load shedding a day.

The Jatiya Party leader said people of his constituency asked him to invite the state minister for power to visit their area and stay a day to see the power outages.

Mujibul requested the state minister Nasrul Hamid to visit his constituency.

He said 41 per cent of the rental power plants are sitting idle as the government paid a Tk 260-billion capacity charge in 2022-23.

He urged the government to revoke the quick rental power plant law for the sake of people’s interest.

The opposition chief whip also criticised the proposed price hike of electricity.

Mentioning some recent road accidents, Mujibul urged the minister to take action against old vehicles without fitness certificates and battery-run auto-rickshaw.