Power, gas utilities asked to provide emergency balances to pre-paid consumers: Nasrul

State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid has directed the power and energy sector utilities to provide emergency balances to their pre-paid consumers.

"We've directed the officials of power and gas offices to provide emergency balances to those consumers who come to recharge their pre-paid cards", he told reporters while visiting Tejgaon local office of Dhaka Power Distribution Company (DPDC) on Monday.

He informed that each single-phase consumer of electricity will get Tk3,000 emergency balance while the three-phase consumer will get Tk5,000 emergency balance.

The directives from the state minister came against the backdrop of the suffering of the pre-paid electricity and gas consumers who failed to recharge their cards from vendors due to shutdown of internet services. 

He also said that power and energy sector incurred a loss of Tk1,000 crore due to the violence in last few days. 

According to consumers of different areas, electricity and gas supply was stopped automatically when their cards' limit was exhausted.

It was seen in many areas in the city that the pre-paid card users had to wait in long queues for several hours to recharge their cards from their respective power offices as card recharge vendors could not provide them the recharge service.

Sources in the Dhaka Power Distribution Company (DPDC) and Dhaka Electric Supply Company (Desco) said there are over 9 lakh electricity consumers who use the pre-paid cards.

Iqramul Haq, a resident of Chattogram's Khulshi area, said, "I had to recharge my electricity pre-paid card standing in a long queue for four hours."

Rahima Begum, a resident of Rampura area, said, "Now I have taken loan from the meter card to continue electricity supply at my home but I don't what will happen later."

UNB reports: Hundreds of families in South Keraniganj, who use pre-paid meter cards, have been suffering for not having electricity in the past two days as they failed to recharge their pre-paid meters owing to the internet shutdown.

The residents of the upazila have also been suffering from water crisis as they couldn't operate motor for lifting water in tanks.

Even the food kept in their refrigerators went rotten, said some residents.

Contacted, Julfiker Ali, general manager of Palli Bidyut-4, did not make any comment in this regard.

Electricity and gas consumers, who use pre-paid cards, have been facing problems failing to recharge their cards as the country has been experiencing internet shutdown since Thursday night amid the countrywide unrest over quota reform and attack on students.

According to consumers of different areas, the pre-paid services are the app-based mobile financial services (MFS) including bKash, Nagad, mKash, Upay, Rocket and other digital wallets. But due to complete internet shutdown, these payment systems are not working.

All the utilities in power and energy sector use the MFS to receive their both pre-paid and post-paid bills.

These include Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB), Desco, DPDC, Bangladesh Rural Electrification Board (BREB), West Zone Power Distribution Company and Northern Electricity Supply Company.             

Titas Gas Transmission and Distribution Company and other gas distribution companies also use the MFS.

In such a situation, Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources in a short text message informed that BPDB's customers can recharge pre-paid meters through USSD short code line GP*777#, bKash *247#, Nagad*167#, Upay*268#.

However, the ministry did not say anything about other utilities companies in power and energy sector.

About the problem, a top official of the Power, Energy and Mineral Resources said that the utilities have been directed to recharge the cards of the consumers whenever they come to the local offices.