State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid on Monday requested authorities of religious institutions like mosques, temples and churches to use air conditioners during prayer time.
“They should keep operating air conditioners just during the prayer time,” he said.
Nasrul Hamid also requested religious institutions to go for taking power-saving measures to ration electricity amid the fuel crunch due to the global crisis, reports UNB.
Earlier on Monday, the government announced a number of steps after a meeting at the Prime Minister's Office on Monday. The steps include shutting down diesel-run power plants, rescheduling office hours, keeping petrol pumps shut one day a week, etc.
In a separate press conference, Nasrul Hamid said the government will enforce daily one-hour load-shedding on an experimental basis for a week.
According to bdnews24.com, he said authorities will monitor whether the nationwide blackout in the off-peak hours is enough or it is necessary for the peak hours from 5 pm to 11 pm in the first week of the outages.
“I don’t think one hour of area-based load-shedding will cause a serious problem,” Nasrul said, adding that the government was prioritising uninterrupted supply to industrial and commercial customers.
“We must realise that all the countries across the globe are facing a fuel crisis somehow,” he said, referring to the Russia-Ukraine war that has pushed the global economy to the brink of a recession amid the recovery from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic.
Nasrul reiterated that the government is not thinking about raising fuel prices now. “Price adjustment is not a solution to the problem. We need to see how much [fuel] we need to save.”
UNB said the state minister informed that the authorities concerned will make a decision regarding closing of petrol pumps a day in a week.
Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation was asked to work out the issue. They will take a final decision after consultation with the transport operators.
He said in no way markets and shopping malls be allowed to keep open after 8:00 pm.
He said the closure of diesel-run power plants will save 10 per cent on petrol import and another 10 per cent could be saved through conservative consumption of diesel in the transport sector.
Officials said the country has about 10 diesel-run power plants having 1290 MW, mostly in the private sector.
