The city virtually experienced neither power failures, nor gas or water shortages over the past six days.

City scenes were refreshing and quite a contrast to the ones seen in recent times with no crowds queuing for water or experiencing blackouts at night.

"There hasn't been any load shedding for the last few days," said a resident of Bashabo. "It was just a week ago that we had 8 -10 hours of load shedding," he added.

Some of the severely affected areas in the city plagued with recurrent load shedding faced occasional power failures during the Eid holidays.

Harun-ur-Rashid, member secretary of Demra-Shyampur Pani Bidyut Sangram Committee told Star City that they had a few hours of power shortages during the holidays, compared with the 10-12 hours of load shedding that usually occurred daily.

"Both electricity and water supplies weren't much of a problem for the past week," Rashid said.

According to residents of certain areas, apart from a few incidents of power fluctuations at night, the supply of electricity was uninterrupted.

"The power voltage tend to dwindle from time to time, but there hasn't been any load shedding lately," said a resident of Khilgaon.

With frequent load shedding and power outages being an integral part of city life, it was a welcoming change for residents who relished the uninterrupted power supply during the past week.

According to Dhaka Electricity Supply Authority (DESA) sources, the amount of electricity consumed during the period of the Eid holiday was around 1000 MW to 1200 MW, while the usual consumption is around 1500 MW to 1850 MW.

"With summer almost at its end, the consumption of electricity tends to go down towards the latter part of the year," said an official of DESA.

"The Eid festival has just helped smoothen the otherwise impossible situation as half the population was away from the city," he said.

Water consumption also experienced dramatic decrease during the Eid holidays. The city that requires around 200 crore litres of water each day, consumed only around 98 crore litres in the past six days, said a WASA source.

"The reduction is attributed to the reduction of half the city population," said Mahfuzur Rahman, WASA's public relations officer. "Apart from that, the reduction was also due to industries being closed during the week," he added.