Harbin delays to commission power plant

Dhaka: Though the country is reeling under massive power outages, a Chinese company has not started operation of the 90 MW Fenchuganj power plant for months after installation, showing different excuses.

The Harbin Power Engineering Ltd, which was supposed to bring the power plant into operation by October 2007, failed to commission the plant on Tuesday the latest deadline provided by the company, said officials of Power Development Board and Power Division.

The company informed the PDB that it was waiting for an US expert to come to Bangladesh to commission the power plant, they said.

‘We are tired of the company’s delay in bringing the power plant into operation when we are facing acute power shortage,’ power secretary M Fouzul Kabir Khan said.

Harbin, which signed a Tk 524 crore contract with the Power Development Board in September 2005 to install the three-unit power plant within 24 months, first deferred the commissioning of the plant after a dispute with the PDB over tax issues.

The PDB decided to deduct $4.5 million as taxes for payment to the National Board of Revenue from Harbin Power Engineering’s bill of $83 million ‘as per the agreement’ and the company claimed the taxes were ‘not payable’.

After missing several deadlines, the company later informed PDB that it would bring the power plant into operation by March. But after Harbin’s equipments were stolen from the power plant in February, the company fixed April 22 as the latest deadline for commissioning the plant.

PDB and Power Division officials said that they believe Harbin has made the PDB hostage by not bringing the power plant into operation to recover the tax that was paid to NBR as it had threatened PDB that it would not commission the plant until the tax issue was resolved.

When contacted, Harbin’s local agent Khadija Islam declined to comment whether the power plant would come into operation. ‘Ask PDB officials about the power plant,’ she said.

PDB chairman Shawkat Ali said that the plant would come into operation this month.

When asked why they were not taking any action against Harbin, Shawkat said, ‘We are trying to solve the problems through negotiation and by keeping to the provisions of the contract.’

Sources in the PDB and the Power Division said that neither the PDB nor the division has so far taken any punitive steps against Harbin as an influential quarter in the government is backing the company.

The PDB’s overall power generation increased on Tuesday evening to 3,728 MW from around 3,550 MW on Monday evening after a 125 MW unit of the Barapukuria power plant, 80 MW Tongi power plant and a 45 MW unit of Baghabari power plant came into operation.

The Tongi and Baghabari plants tripped on Monday and the Barapukuria plant was shut down because of workers’ unrest.

Frequent load-shedding, however, continued across the country despite the increase in generation as the gap between supply and demand is still very high. Although the official demand for power project was around 4,650 MW during the evening peak hours, the actual demand for power should be around 5,000 MW as per the government’s master plan.