Power outage hits parliament session

A rare power outage for more than three hours in the parliament building has halted an ongoing session.

The outage struck the building at 4.45pm on Tuesday, leaving most of the blocks without electricity.

The parliament relied on back-up generators to keep the session alive before it was adjourned by the deputy speaker for the day.

The parliamentary session presided over by Speaker Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury was scheduled to begin at 5pm, but was delayed by 10 minutes.

After wrapping up the question-and-answer session at 6pm, Deputy Speaker Md Fazle Rabbi Miah later adjourned the session until 5pm on Wednesday.

Miah instantly blamed the outage on a technical fault in the Meghnaghat Power Plant. “It's a disaster. That's why the session was adjourned," Miah told reporters.

However, electricity was restored to the parliament at 7.15pm.

“When the power outage occurred, the assembly room and some of the blocks were lit up by the generators,” an official of the parliament secretariat told bdnews24.com.

“The supply was disrupted mainly due to the tripping of a power line,” Md Ramiz Uddin Sarker, executive director of Dhaka Power Distribution Company Ltd that supplies electricity to the parliament building, told bdnews24.com.

There was a problem with the Power Grid Company of Bangladesh’s gridline in Agargaon area around 5pm, he said. “It was resolved within half an hour. The situation is back to normal.”