At a treacherous time when energy or a lack of it appears to be the mother of all evils, the majority of governments the world over are desperately looking for damage control measures. Economies, including some of the highly industrialised and developed ones, are bleeding almost everywhere on account of the rising living cost triggered by energy crunch and its atrociously high import cost. This has prompted even industrially advanced Britain and Germany to go for power rationing. That Bangladesh with little fossil fuel reserves will follow suit is quite understandable. Its initial measures to reduce electricity consumption was to go for, among others, planned load shedding and make do with 25 per cent less use of power in government offices and save 10 per cent of the budget allocation for the energy sector.
Now the cabinet has decided to step up the austerity further in order to cut the expenditure on costly import of fuel oils and liquefied natural gas (LNG). To that end, timings of government and autonomous offices and banks have been changed and shortened by an hour. While government offices and autonomous bodies will have their timings from 8:00 am to 3:00pm, banks will start at 9:am and close at 4:pm. Educational institutions will have a two-day weekly holiday instead of one-day. Apparently, the move has merit but the benefit in terms of saved power and energy can be fully enjoyed if the power companies and subscribers apply their maximum discretion in making the programme a success. In this context, the proposal made by the business circle is worth considering. It is in favour of shifting the weekly holiday for educational institutions to Sunday and Monday. That the shopping malls will have to pull down their shutter by 8:pm sharp, is understandable. But at the same time, the shops should be instructed to drastically reduce the unnecessarily dazzling lighting extravaganza.
How much power and energy can be saved following the latest austerity measures can easily be determined after a certain period, say, a month. There should have been a programme of regular monitoring and a study to see the benefits accrued from the stage one austerity measures also. Earlier, there was a clear indifference to power supply to rural Bangladesh. This time the best thing likely to happen, if the instruction is followed, is the uninterrupted power supply to villages from midnight to morning on consideration of irrigation to paddy fields. In many areas, sparse rainfalls and even drought have made irrigation absolutely necessary for Aman seed beds and plantation. Costly agricultural inputs mean costlier staple but if the production is bumper, it can keep the price somewhat moderate.
The bottom line is that austerity measures in terms of energy use have to be geared to reap the maximum benefits by adjusting and readjusting routines and practices of daily life --- be it at the family, office, factory and industry levels. In this task, irregularities resorted to by the utility services such as Titas, the Dhaka Electric Supply Authority (DESA), Dhaka Power Distribution Company (DPDC) and even Water Supply and Sewerage Authority (WASA) must not be tolerated. Those must be made to put their acts together so that the precious utilities do not go waste in the name of system loss. Only then will the austerity measures bring about the desired results.