An essay on the current power scenario was published in the pages of local English daily on December 30. It rightly pointed out that for the new coal fired power plants, we should go for open pit coal mining instead of shaft mining or importing coal which will waste foreign funds and not economically efficient enough.
This seems to be the best logical option and our government should go all out for open pit coal mining. The present government’s mandate was to save the power sector, which had numerous accusations of unparalleled scandals by earlier government, from the chaotic condition. The current government had to re-rail this derailed sector and somehow manage to bring it back on line. Arranging quick rental plants on such short notice could naturally be expensive and is certainly not one of the best choices. But, given the dismal power situation there was not much choice available.
The next important issue is whether we should refurbish or rebuild all our more than 30 year old power plants. It is said that the government is setting new plants instead of repairing the old ones only because the new projects have better opportunities of corruption. Some experts also argue that repairing and overhauling these out dated power plants, are just waste of time and money. They say that it will only result in loss of resources for the government. However, it feels that current government’s approaches are more or less, in the right direction.
SA Mansoor
Dhaka