Blackouts at Dhaka New Market was caused by a fire destroying a cable and panel board. The responsibility of maintenance of this cable and the panel board lies with Dhaka City Corporation. DESA is in no way responsible for this power failure and the delay in restoring it. It may be mentioned here that DESA is yet to receive taka 25 lac as electricity bills from this area. Though we are not aware of the arrangement between the shop owners and the City Corporation, one must consider the fact that the consumers, domestic or commercial, have their responsibility to clear their bills on a regular basis. It is expected that the defaulters should not be in a position to draw sympathy from any quarters.

You have accused us for not spelling out a cut-out date for restoring normalcy in electricity distribution in certain parts, disrupted by Ulan-Dhammondi underground cable fault. Completion of this work was subject to proper identification and arrival of foreign experts from abroad. Moreover, the job is a highly technical and cumbersome one. Don't you think that spelling out a cut out date in this scenario on mere assumptions would have been unwise and misleading? You may note that the cable fault led to 60 MW of load shedding covering a sizeable area of Dhaka.

But we tried our best to reduce the problem to a minimum level. By way of diverting and bypassing, we have restricted the load shedding to about 10 MW only. Is it not an achievement? Don't you feel that bringing down the total load shedding hours from 1042 hrs in 2000/1 FY to 767 hours in 2002/3 FY deserves some appreciation?

You might agree with me that the present management is trying hard to remain much more transparent than before. I personally share all the information and statistics with the journalists interested in producing objective and authentic report. My door would always be open to your reporters too.