Residents of Barishal city are enduring a severe power crisis, facing daily outages that leave them without electricity for up to eleven hours a day. Frequent disruptions have severely dislocated routine life across the metropolitan area, hitting vulnerable groups, including children, the elderly, and students, the hardest.

The intense load shedding began at the start of July, sweeping across various neighbourhoods. Power cuts regularly stretch between one to one-and-a-half hours per instance, occurring eight to ten times across day and night. With electricity unavailable for a substantial portion of the day, daily activities have ground to a near standstill. Academic preparations for students, local commerce, and office operations have all taken a heavy toll, with heat and humidity compounding the discomfort indoors.

Disrupted sleep has become a nightly reality for citizens due to prolonged outages during the early hours. Without ceiling fans or cooling appliances functioning, families struggle through stifling conditions. Students preparing for examinations find it difficult to maintain focus under erratic lighting conditions, while local journalists report that the unpredictable power supply is severely hampering newspaper printing operations, delaying press runs.

Official figures from the power sector underline the widening gap between supply and demand. According to Md Monjurul Islam, executive engineer at the West Zone Power Distribution Company (WZPDCL) in Barishal, the city houses approximately 150,000 consumers with a peak daily demand of 100 megawatts. However, the local grid currently receives only half of that required allocation. This massive deficit forces utility providers to implement rolling blackouts throughout the municipal territory.

Frustrated by the persistent disruptions, local communities and business owners are demanding immediate intervention. Given the heavy reliance on electricity across healthcare, education, judicial proceedings, and municipal services, residents urge the authorities to bridge the supply gap and restore a reliable, uninterrupted power supply.

What steps do you believe local utilities can take to better manage severe generation deficits during peak demand periods?