MOSCOW, November 2 (RIA Novosti) — Bangladesh officials have restored the electricity supply after the country was hit by overall power blackouts on Saturday, BBC reports.
"We hope the power supply will be fully restored by early Sunday morning," said ministry of power spokesman Saiful Hasan earlier.
After twelve hours of total darkness, engineers managed to restore the interrupted power supply, receiving loud joy acclaims from all around the country. According to Bangladesh officials, the power cut was caused by the failure of the Bangladesh-India transmission line. The line connects the Indian city of Baharampur with the Bangladesh city of Bherama and is supposed to supply 500 MW power from India to Bangladesh.
Dhaka's international airport and medical facilities kept functioning with emergency generators despite power outages. But many shops and offices had to stop their work and close, according to AP.
"This is terrible," said one of Dhaka's residents. "We had some confidence in the government over last few years that the power sector was improving slowly. But what is this?" he asked dissatisfied.
Bangladesh energy infrastructure is quite poor and badly managed. The country’s power sector faces numerous challenges such as corruption among officials, delays in replacement of old infrastructure and low efficiencies of power stations. The agreement between Bangladesh and India, signed in October 2013, was supposed to improve situation and extend access to electricity among the country’s population. However, old infrastructure and poor management continue to take their toll of the country’s energy system.
