Dhaka is now experiencing more load-shedding as the government has decided to distribute the burden of the ongoing power shortage more evenly across the country instead of placing most of it on rural areas, Prime Minister’s Adviser Zahed Ur Rahman said today.

“Those of us who live in Dhaka are probably experiencing load-shedding now, which we used to see less at one time. The tendency was to provide electricity to people in Dhaka and increase load-shedding much more in rural areas. You have seen that this government has decided that people will share the crisis.”

“But it is also a fact that a big city needs to be given more electricity, not because powerful people live here, but because big cities have more economic activities.”

He made the remarks at a regular briefing at the Secretariat.

Following the prime minister’s instructions, the government has decided to adjust load-shedding in areas of Dhaka served by the Dhaka Power Distribution Company (DPDC) and Dhaka Electric Supply Company (Desco), and redistribute the electricity saved to rural areas and other parts of the country, Zahed said.

The move is improving power supply to industries and other important consumers outside Dhaka while reducing prolonged and frequent outages in rural areas, he said.

Zahed said the government did not expect the situation to continue for long and was taking steps to ease the shortage.

Referring to the previous Awami League government and the interim government, he said load-shedding had occurred across the country despite discussions about uninterrupted supply, with rural and remote areas bearing most of the burden.

He said he was collecting data from those periods and hoped to provide figures next week on the extent of load-shedding in megawatts.

“What happened then was that it was completely pushed onto villages or remote areas. We have moved away from that. We hope the people will understand this,” Zahed said.

He also expressed hope that load-shedding would decline significantly soon.

“We hope that the amount of load-shedding we have will come down quite a lot within a very short period.”

Zahed attributed the current shortage to fuel shortages, power-plant faults and maintenance, transmission and grid constraints, and rising electricity demand.

He said demand was also increasing as economic activity picked up following the formation of a democratic government.

Economic growth was lower during the interim government, while efforts to expand electricity supply were also limited, he said.