Users suffer amid internet outage
FROM PAGE 12
Like him, many consumers braved the scorching heat to recharge their prepaid cards yesterday.
A shopkeeper told Safina Hoque of Lalmatia that he could not recharge her prepaid card. Her home had been without power since yesterday morning.
Desperate, Safina went to DPDC’s Lalmatia office.
“I stood in line but later learned that the DPDC won’t recharge my card, but will only extend the existing negative balance of my meter to Tk 1,000,” she said around noon.
She said the extension of her negative balance would last her only days.
Meanwhile, people have been running out of credit on their gas meters as well.
Anik Hasan of Nakhalpara told The Daily Star that their gas meter went out of credit on Saturday morning.
“We used our neighbour’s kitchen for cooking on Saturday. That night, we just had flattened rice. The next day, we got food from a restaurant.”
“We can’t go on like this.”
Visiting the Titas Gas office at Karwan Bazar in the capital, this newspaper found the office padlocked. The people who were arriving for a top-up, were soon returning disappointed.
Al Amin, public relations officer at Titas, said the prepaid meters have facilities to provide emergency balance which should be enough for a small family to cook 10 to 15 days.
“For now, there is no other way to top-up prepaid gas meters. We’re trying to find an alternative,” he said.
The company also asked its users to call 16496 if they face any difficulties in getting the emergency balance.
The ordeal was same for consumers using prepaid gas and electricity meters in different parts of the country, including Chattogram and Cumilla.
“My home went dark on Saturday evening,” said 45-year-old Kohinoor Begum at Bangladesh Power Development Board’s (PDB’s) Khulshi office in Chattogram yesterday.
She managed to top-up her card after waiting there for four hours.
Around 8.5 lakh PDB users in Chattogram use prepaid meters.
The chief engineer of PDB in the port city, Humayun Kabir Mazumder, said they were trying to mitigate the sufferings by increasing manpower.
In Cumilla, people were seen rushing to nearby PDB offices in different parts of the city.
There are around 50,000 subscribers who use prepaid meters there.
State minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid yesterday visited different electricity suppliers’ offices in the capital.
“It is disheartening that the distributors have no other option now other than people coming to the offices for recharging prepaid meters. They have limited machines to provide the emergency support,” he said while briefing reporters.
[Nazrul Islam and Sifayet Ullah from Chattogram, Khalid Bin Nazrul from Cumilla also contributed to this report]