Ruling Awami League lawmakers, elected for constituencies in Dhaka and adjacent areas, on Wednesday feared violent action by city residents unless they could immediately give people a respite from the nagging water and power crisis.The lawmakers expressed their fear at a meeting with the LGRD and cooperatives minister, Syed Ashraful Islam, in his ministry with the city people facing acute scarcity of supply water and power since the advent of summer.
Ashraful, in response, said the army would be deployed to help the water supply authorities in Dhaka and Narayanganj from Thursday (today).
They called for an immediate solution to the problem to stave off widespread agitation as Dhaka WASA, the city's water supply agency, could supply about 190 crore litres of water a day against the demand for 220 crore litres during the hot summer.
http://www.ittefaq.com/issues/2010/04/01/news0595.htm
At the meeting on the water management and supply in Dhaka and Narayanganj, the lawmakers demanded installation of more water pumps to resolve the crisis and to ensure speedy supply of water to different parts of the city.
Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal, lawmaker for the constituency covering Tejgaon, said there had been no water supply to the Moghbazar areas, which covers his house, for three days.
People are also complaining of bad smell in dirty supply water, he said.
Sanjida Khanom, lawmaker for the constituency covering Shyampur, said the ministry must do whatever it can immediately; there will, otherwise, be an outburst of public anger.
She also said any such situation would be very unpleasant for the present democratic government.
Habibur Rahman Mollah, lawmaker for the constituency covering Demra, said people would understand the problems of electricity but it was hard for them to put up with water crisis.
http://www.ittefaq.com/issues/2010/04/01/news0587.htm
In response, the minister said the government was fully aware of the situation but there was not much it could do to solve the problem immediately.
The lawmakers also demanded water distribution with water lorries of Dhaka WASA in the worst affected areas of the capital.
Ashraful told reporters after the meeting they had sought cooperation from the lawmakers after the government decided to deploy the army to help the Dhaka WASA in supplying water among the affected people.
He admitted WASA, despite enhancing its supply capacity by 14 crore litres since July 2009, was struggling to cope with the growing demand for supply water because of fast rising population in the city.
WASA officials told the meeting they were facing problems in pumping out water because of frequent power outages.
It has already installed dual electricity connections to 80 pumps while similar connections to 55 more pumps will be given soon. WASA relied on some 546 deep tube wells for 87 per cent of its supply water while the rest comes from river water.
WASA has also set up diesel-run generators at 234 water pumps and kept 60 mobile generators ready for emergency use. It has 61 water lorries of different types for emergencies. Five more lorries will be bought soon, the meeting was told.
WASA officials hoped they would run the supply round-the-clock from Chandnighat and Godnail water treatment plants and from 10 others pumps after installation of four gas-run generators.
It is true that the government inherited a power crisis, and the people of this country have been patient in waiting for it to be resolved, understanding that these things take time. However, now that it has been in office for well over a year, the government has no excuse for its continuing inability to at least give us a roadmap of what lies ahead.
Even worse than the government's apparent incompetence in dealing with the issue, is the amateurish measures that it periodically has tried to implement in order to relieve the situation. These have included the ill-conceived DST initiative and the directive for reduced business hours for shops.
The anti-AC order is merely the latest in this line of foolishness. In the first place, it will have only a negligible impact on aggregate electricity usage, even if it were enforceable. More to the point, it is totally unenforceable and risks making the government look like a laughing stock.
When the government has failed so miserably when it comes to setting up new power generating plants, fixing and bringing on line the power plants that now lie idle and under-utilised, plugging the endemic systems loss, and cracking down on the numberless illegal connections that proliferate, to try to address the issue with a directive limiting use of air conditioners demonstrates a lack of seriousness in dealing with the problem.
The report yesterday of the suffering of the patients at DMCH due to lack of power saw the crisis reach its lowest ebb. That the situation has been allowed to reach such a sorry pass simply beggars the imagination.
The government is not doing its job, and ordering people to shut off their ACs sounds to us like the worst form of avoidance of responsibility and buck passing, as though the problem is the excessive consumption of electricity in some quarters and not the government's failure to generate power sufficient to meet the people's needs.
The government needs to stop these asinine ad hoc solutions that serve only to make it look clueless, and needs to address the crisis head-on. Right now, the impression that is created by the government's latest plan, is that it is simply floundering in its response to the crisis.
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