The government retracted its earlier orders at a meeting with the leaders of Bangladesh Shop Owners Association (BSOA) and Dhaka City Shop Owners Association (DCSOA) at the power ministry yesterday.

Power Secretary ANH Akhtar Hossain presided over the meeting attended by top officials of PDB, Desa, Desco and REB.

The traders, however, responded to a request of the government to leave out illumination of their malls and keep lighted 50 percent of their essential lights.

The meeting also decided to continue regular load-shedding as part of power rationing instead of four-hour outage.

During the normal times, the government will provide minimum electricity to facilitate the Operation of essential air-conditioning and lifting system at shopping malls while the market owners will operate their standby generators for keeping their lights on.

The meeting decided to form area-wise coordination committees comprising three members from among the shop owners and another three from local power offices to execute and monitor the decisions.

Presidents of Bangladesh Shop Owners Association Amir Hossain and Dhaka City Shop Owners Association Helal Uddin Helal spoke at the meeting.

Meanwhile, unit-1 of the 450MW Meghnaghat power hub was set for scheduled maintenance from Sunday midnight, giving another knock to the country's erratic power-supply situation.

Power Development Board (PDB) Chairman ANM Rizwan admitted that the shutdown of Meghnaghat plant would "seriously affect" the power supply as the total generation output will fall below 3,000 MW against the demand for 5,000 MW.

"The shutdown of Meghnaghat plant may attribute to a decrease in voltage and create a frequency problem," Rizwan told UNB.

He said it is unlikely that the situation would improve before next week when two closed power plants may resume operation.