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29 March 2006 - Severe load shedding overnight brought several hundred people onto the streets in Dhaka, Pakistan to protest yesterday. The protesters then surrounded and ransacked the office of the Power Development Board (PDB).
Witnesses said the residents joined lawyers who demonstrated at 11.30 am calling for the restoration of power, following a blackout from midnight on Monday.
The group, angered by a blackout from midnight on Monday, ransacked and damaged four rooms of the PDB office and hurled abuse at officials.
An engineer at the PDB office said that the demand for electricity generated by PDB's 14 000 domestic consumers stands at 10 MW, however existing facilities struggle to supply between two and three megawatts.
The Monday night blackout occurred when a 132-KV grid transmission line from Maniknagar to the Bangabhaban power substation tripped at 11:13 am Monday, causing a black-out in many areas of the city.
Power supply to the presidential palace Bangabhaban and some other parts of the city was disrupted for about 12 minutes following the mechanical breakdown, official sources said.
Sources in PDB said the double-circuit transmission line failed due to a "technical fault".
However, they said, electricity transmission through one of the two circuits of the 132-KV line was restored within 12 minutes while another circuit took about 30 minutes to resume operations.
However, despite emergency repairs, electricity supply to the country's business capital Motijheel remained down for about two hours following the partial national grid failure.
Other news reports mention another grid failure left the port town without power for about ten hours from 6 am Monday, seriously affecting industrial production, mainly at the BSCIC industrial park - the centre of knit garment factories.
Business entrepreneurs have demanded uninterrupted power supply, as they are afraid of losing their international buyers because of disruptions in production caused by the nagging power crisis.
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