North faces worst outage of season
Staff Correspondent, Rajshahi
The entire North Bengal witnessed the season's worst load shedding yesterday as the lone operational 125 MW Bara Pukuria power unit tripped while six other power stations failed to resume operation.Power sub stations in 16 districts of the region received 5 to 7 MW power each from Eastern sources, Power Development Board (PDB) officials said. "In the evening, we set a private Westmont power unit at Baghabari on production of 40 MW electricity, partially resuming the supply," said Rajshahi zonal PBD chief engineer Molla AKM Ahkab. Among other six units -- 100 MW and 71 MW PDB units and a 45 MW Westmont unit at Baghabari are still to be operational after these units were shut down on February 26. The 18MW diesel-run Sayedpur, 20MW Rangpur, 2MW Thakurgaon units were usually run during peak hours at night. The load shedding led to severe water crisis and disturbance to normal life, and problem in operating power-run irrigation machines. Our correspondent adds from Rangpur: Unprecedented electricity crisis in the national grid paralysed lives in Rangpur and its adjoining districts yesterday. The SSC examinees and farmers using power-run tube wells for irrigation in IRRI-boro fields are the worst victims of the power crisis.
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