Power supply in Dhaka city was severely disrupted, increasing miseries of the people amid intolerable heat, as a 132 KV transmission line at Siddhir-ganj accidentally broke down at 1.55 pm yesterday.

All parts of the city experienced frequent power disruption. lasting for hours. The old part bore the brunt of the supply shortfall while other areas were less affected. PDB and DESA officials said.

The amount of load-shedding due to the incident rose to around 400 MW in the city against usual 250 to 250 MW a day. sources said.

In another incident in Narayanganj. a 33 KV power line along the bank of Sita-lakhya river broke down when

a crane of a barge hit the high-tension line "accidentally’'. A major part of the port town remained without electricity since noon yesterday.

However, the power plants were generating power normally despite the accidents in the high-voltage transmission lines.

"Usually, when a transmission Une trips, the inter-connected power plants also trip. In this case, the Siddhirganj plants could have tripped, triggering a country-wide grid failure. Luckily the plants were not affected", one source said.

Though power generation remained unhindered yesterday. the supply scenario in ihe capital remained grim till filing of this report at 9.30 pm.

Officials and engineers of PDB and DESA rushed to the spot to restore the Ulan-Haripur 132 KV line. The line is expected to be restored by 10.30 pm or 11 pm.” said a DESA official last night. “As a temporary measure, we are trying to supply power to old town areas through the Tongi-Ulan transmission line." he added.

Three major transmission linesHaripur. Tongi and Hasnabad— supply most of the power in the city. Of these, the-Haripur transmission line meets around 40 per cent of the city's requirement which is around 1000 MW in peak hours.

A PDB press release last night said, a cable of the first

Power plant

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Power Development Board (PDB) had purchased a power plant of same configuration from a French company at a cost of 25 million dollars, some 22 million dollars less than the price of RPC's generators. PDB is currently installing the generators at Shahjibazar.

"It is true that the total cost of PDB’s Shahjibazar plant will be lower than RPC's My-mensingh project because all infrastructure facilities including transmission lines are already there at Shahjibazar. At Mymensingh, RPC has to develop infrastructure for the project." the source said.

"Moreover, the RPC has no study-on the infrastructure facilities to be built for the second Shase. Yet. the Energy Ministry as confidently instructed REB and RPC to sign the second phase contract with the same company within three weeks." he noted.

The second phase has been scheduled to be completed within 15 months of signing the agreement, the source added.

REB will raise the equity portion of the project’s finance by increasing its shares in the RPC and the number of rural electrification associations, which are its subscribers. The loan portion of the project cost will be arranged through credit from commercial banks or donors.

The government has however emphasised arranging the credit from commercial banks for implementation of the project "urgently".

“This is clearly unfair." commented a source. "A committee with representatives from REB. RPC and PDB was formed earlier to study these projects first. But the study has not yet been completed. The PDB representative in the committee strongly opposed this because the second phase is costlier than any other similar project."