Some areas in Dhaka suffer rolling blackouts for 12 hours on Tuesday

The rolling blackouts have reached such an acute level that some areas in Dhaka are suffering outages for up to 12 hours on Tuesday.

Most of the areas of the capital were supposed to suffer four to six hours of power cuts, according to schedules published by distributors.

Dhaka Power Distribution Company or DPDC said Shyampur will see 12 hours of outages, reports bdnews24.com.

“The intensity of power cuts has increased. Power has been going out frequently since morning. We barely got power for three hours,” said Fazlur Rahman, a businessman of Shyampur.

Bikash Dewan, managing director of DPDC, said he was tired of explaining why the power crisis is growing. “We got 500 MW less electricity than the supply. How shall we fill in such a gap between demand and supply?”

The demand in DPDC areas was 1,700 MW on Tuesday, but it got 1,200-1,250 MW.

Another distributor, Dhaka Electric Supply Company, forecast six hours of outages in Ibrahimpur, Kafrul and Pallabi. The other areas were supposed to be without power for five hours.

A DESCO official said the only reason behind power cuts increasing is a fall in power generation. He requested anonymity as he was not authorised to speak to the media.

“The situation wouldn’t have been this worse had the generation units been operational. We get less power than the PGCB [Power Grid Company of Bangladesh] predicts.”