Dark days for Nepal during energy crisis (News Feature)

By Pratibha Tuladhar Feb 7, 2011, 5:47 GMT

Kathmandu - The television news programme opens with a studio lit by the glow of kerosene lamps rather than the bright lights that viewers are accustomed to.

Producers of the Laltin Bulletin programme came up with the ruse as a symbolic protest against the long power cuts that have become a part of daily life in the Himalayan country.

'Why not commemorate the problem the nation is facing by sarcasm - pressure to the government?' asked Bhushan Dahal, chief executive producer of private Kantipur Television.

'We'd be more than happy if others join us,' he said of the gimmick, which was lauded by the Nepal Broadcasters Association as television stations faced heavy revenue losses because of the power outages.

Nepal was to face 14 hours of daily power cuts starting Monday, the Nepal Electricity Authority said.

The daily scheduled cuts would go up from 12 hours to 14 hours because electricity generation had decreased with the receding water levels in reservoirs.

Energy Minister Prakash Saran Mahat painted a bleak picture of the situation last week.

'Since no major power plant construction has taken place so far, the country will still face power cuts for the next five years,' he said.

Nepal depends largely on hydroelectric generation for its electricity. It currently produces about 250 megawatts of electricity, but demand is 780 megawatts.

'In the dry winter season, when the river flow is not uniform, the power production plummets to just 250 megawatts,' said Pradip Gangol, executive manager of the Independent Power Producers Association Nepal, made up of 34 private energy firms.

'Twenty-five per cent of the generated electricity gets stolen,' he added, referring to people tapping into power lines without paying.

Construction of additional power plants were hampered by Nepal's decadelong civil war, which ended in 2006, and remained pending because of local political squabbling.

The existing eight plants are unable to meet rising demand, and the resulting power cuts are affecting everyone from the 400,000 high school students studying for next month's School Leaving Certificate exams to workers at darkened factories as the outages have brought industry to the brink.

The Sunsari-Morang industrial corridor in eastern Nepal has been experiencing 24 hours of power outages once a week and six hours of cuts on the remaining six days. That has reduced production in the industrial corridor by 60 per cent.

'About 50 per cent of the labourers have lost their jobs due to the ongoing power crisis,' said Avinash Bohara, general secretary of the Morang Business Association.

The Federation of Nepalese Chamber of Commerce and Industries said that although private generators are an alternative, they raise manufacturing costs, particularly for small businesses.

Nepal also buys power from India for districts near their border, but those supplies are to be suspended for about two months because of repairs to 12 transmission towers, Indian officials said.

Nepal's electricity authority also announced that the eastern region would face 18 hours of daily power outages until the towers are repaired.

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