To improve drainage of DND area by water development board and Bangladesh Army 19 ECB 24 Engineering construction division.

 I would like to present you some photos and a clip showing the present status dated 1st January 2022 of a project “To improve water drainage around the DND area", proposed by Bangladesh water development board, contracted to m/s Tazul Islam, implemented by 19 ECB 24 Engineering construction brigade, project implementation period 2017-2020.

The photos and the clip says it all; no explaination needed.

I am sure in terms of result oriented project leaders, they will find it distrubing and may take actions to influence the status quo. 

Thanks you. Please review thr photos and clip. It is by the Fatullah cattle market i.e DIT market in lalpur, next to Jalal Ahmed Masjid.

https://youtu.be/DcmDfbz6MHA

What can you do? - Tango ‘n rotten mango

I was haunted by the fact that I only portrait the problem statement of the Dhaka Airport in “Tango ‘n rotten Mango”; I should have provided my opinion on solving the stated problem.

Here is what I think the problem is: Lack of “Intention”.

How can you solve it?  Proper training and Routine management.

Can you solve it?  YES, in 6 months! (Provided I can fire anyone ;). I will be bored after 1 year.

How much money do you need?  No additional budget; (Will fire bad apples; reward the good apples)

What has “intention” has to do with “serving” the visitors, foreign investors, scholars or returning “remittances earner poor hard working Bangladeshis”?  I will tell you in a minute; just bear with me.

First and foremost, people who are doing the job need to know why they are doing this job.

What type of job is this?

What are they supposed to do?

Why do they do the way they are doing? Is there a better way?

Who are paying for it?  Government?  His BOSS that he/she reports to?

Is there any actionable consequence if they are not doing it the way they supposed to do?

Is this a job "until death does us apart" thing?

Now these people probably go through training. The trainer probable trained them what books says like, “সদা সত্য কথা বলিবে” The truth is, most of us don’t do that and we have our reasons :)

 It was “এক কান দিয়া ডুকে অন্য কান দিয়া বের হয়”।

I am not biting the trainer and I am not here to make a lot of enemies. I have to live here (here is my reason!). This is what I think probably make it little bit better.

“Glass Jar Delivery” my concept of delivering education:

Trainer need to believe in what he is training. If I deliver you a glass jar, I have to be very careful with my steps. I have to hand it over to you such a way that you carefully receive it and secure it. Then I take of my hand. Thereby I ensure the delivery. Hence you receive the glass jar as I “intended”.

An undamaged, unbroken, complete glass jar is handed over from one person to another. Task completed. This is what I call “Glass Jar delivery: my concept of communication”

Once the trainer is on board with right “Intention”; then he need the precise material that he supposed to delivery. The “intention” will guide to the right content.


There are 51 lacs people in Singapore for the area of 710 sqkm; their airport is bigger than Dhaka. Except law enforcement people, very few other airport officials are wondering around. I know our airport is small, lot more people to manage it; however if those people were managed efficiently, they could do lot better J

One has to study the service time, estimate the number of passengers arriving at certain time, and allocate the desks with capable personal to meet the demand. For non-rush time use them for different task.

  

To prepare the training material or work plan the question we should be asking:

What are we trying to do? 

We are trying to make you happy.

How do I make you happy?

By doing what you are supposed to do in a courteous, generous, genuine manner and you feel happy about doing it; it is in your job contract that you are serving a person who eventually pays your monthly salary.

They pay it in the form of ticketing, travel tax, airport tax and so on. It is not your “BOSS” that you are getting your salary from; the airport employees salary comes from these” very illiterate wage earners” who are using this airport.

So respect these “wired” dressed young men, say thank you to them for your job. Make them happy and invite them to come more often to make your airport earn more.

Because of them you are providing food to your table at home. They are your real BOSS. By the way don’t show me your “irritated” face; be thankful and smile! J

This massage need to be delivered like the “Glass Jar” method to the immigration officers and all the people working in the airport.

To accept this lesson; they need to have “intention”. To serve they need to have “intention”.

I have been frequently traveling for the last 6 months and I see some positive changes happening in the Airport. Cleanliness, better appearances are some to acknowledge. There are less people wondering around; however still a long way to go.

Tango 'n rotten Mango

“Tango, please come”, the immigration officer on the right side of the immigration box under the “SAARC/Foreign Passport” said to his radio. I am standing in the line, waiting for my turn next. Tango is relatively younger than the immigration officer at that desk. While Tango at his desk, the officer told him, “This is not working”. This event took place in Dhaka International Airport arrival counter procceding to immigration in March 2012.

Tango told him, “Go back to previous page”. Man said, “It is not working”.

Then Tango lean over and hit the key. Man accepted the help unwillingly. Tango left to other counter.

After a minute, the man, I mean the officer, screamed, “Tango, Over, Tango, Over”. The officer shouted to his boss (someone seems like in-charge), “why he left, this things does not work. Ask him to come immediately, ask him to keep standing here”.

Tango came, said: “get out from this page and go to the main page”. “This does not go to main page, where is main page?” said the officer. Tango said, “You are not doing it right, do this way”. 

Tango leaned over the cubicle. “Are you teaching me computer?” the officer shouted. 

“Did you see this, did you see”, the officer looking over the other counters, trying to get attention of other immigration officers. “See sir, you have to do something, this “ সেদিনের পোলা আমার এ কম্পুতার শিখাএ (young man teaching me computer)”. “You have to do the judgment”, officer trying to get his boss’s agreement. 

“You stay here and make this thing work”, said the officer to Tango assertively. This is becoming a show and the poor customer at his counter is trying grasp what is happening.

Anyway, this drama end and the poor customer get his passport back. I am next. I am not sure what I am heading into.

I handed over my passport. The officer took it. It appeared to me that he is typing something, one key at a time and probably end up in the same situation like while serving previous customer. “Tango come-in, Tango come-in” and the saga continue ….

Fast forward 6 months from March 2012 to September 2012. We are at the arrival hall of the Dhaka International Airport. The Arrival Hall is full. I had an opportunity to go through the busiest International arrival halls in world like, LAX, JFK, SFO, John Wayne, O’Hare, Heathrow, Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong and so on for the last 20 years. They are bigger and lots more people arriving at the same time in the arrival halls.

However, in Dhaka airport we are standing in the arrival hall, one hour goes, two hour goes, someone vomit on the line. We are standing next to the vomit, waiting for the mercy of the immigration officers to give us the privileges to let us into their beloved country.

In front of me, there is a group of 11 high schoolers from Australia. I was chit chatting with them to pass the boring time. I was tired of watching people in the line, I was tired of watching people in uniform (custom or immigration or people with badges) wondering around in front of the counters, back of the counters, by our sides;  they act busy; however I don’t see them doing anything. They don’t bother noticing the vomit in the floor.

I asked the Australian High school students, how many days they will be staying, what places they are going. They told me that they will be staying in Bangladesh for 16 days and has an open schedule to visit places. 

They seems like came from a Christian school and most likely will try to do missionary work, I thought. I noticed that they dressed appropriately to blend the local culture and tradition as well as to adjust the weather. I advised them to drink plenty of water to hydrate and try to stock good source of clean drinking water.

In the line next to mine, there was an old man of sixty or so. I notice him exhausted. He is saying to himself, “This is unacceptable”. He was in the “Foreign Investor/Businessmen” line. “Business is good here, that’s why I have been coming here, but this is outrageous, I am willing to pay more for faster service”. 

I asked him, “What do you do”. He said, “I am in pharmaceuticals, I teach pharmaceuticals companies”. I am exploring business here and I am also interested in pharmaceuticals so I asked him which company.

He said with a look of a professor, “All of them, Incepta, Beximco, Square, you name it”. “Business is good, but I cannot take it anymore. I think this is my last one, that’s it”.

I told him, “You got to excuse these people, you should not deprive the country or the companies because of this”.

“I am going to ruin my whole day, I could have done lot more with these three hours” he murmured.  Later I found someone waiting for him with a placard, “Mike Castle”. “This is my last, never gonna come again.”

I am not expert on how to do immigration task. As I said I have been through a lot of immigrations. Just yesterday I came from Singapore, it took less than 60 second, I repeat less than 60 second to do the immigration. Not to mention JFK or LAX where thousands of flights arrive and take off every day.

My common sense tells me that an immigration officer looks at the passport and visa, record it and let you go. Of course there are people that they screen, list of unwanted people that needs to pattern match. Those are all done in the back ground by the software program.

But for the people who already in the system, all they have to do is to enter the passport number or the name. All previous record comes and you just match the passport photo with the person in front of you. It is less than a minute job. Of course if you have “one finger typer” it will take 20 second for 10 digits and still you may be done with in a minute. I wonder why it takes that long time, what in in that screen?

I should not confuse you by only focusing in one event and that event is not the sole responsible for the slowness in the processing counters of the immigration desks. Rush hour management, study and understand the flight schedule and allocate resources accordingly may be some of the bottlenecks.

Let me finish the blog with a good one.

As I said I was in Singapore last week, I had an incident at the Dhaka Airport. I checked in, passed through the immigration. I sit in the lobby and filling up the arrival cards for my destination. I try to keep up to date with my tasks. 

I had a passport cover or wallet, where I keep my passport, USD and some credit cards. I pull out my passport and filled up the forms at hand. I put my passport in my pocket and walk to the boarding gate 5. I entered in to the boarding lounge and sit there in the waiting area in front of the TV. I want to put the things where it supposed to be, so I reached out to my wallet or passport cover, alas, it is not in my pocket.

A shock waves flow through my spine! Where it might be? I rushed to the boarding counter and wanted the other part of the boarding pass and go out; however instead of giving me the other part, now they asked me to give my part to them and go out to find my staff without any boarding passes at all.

Anyway, I have no time for this, so I left my part and walking and running to the place where I was filling up the forms.

I see a person next to where I seat, probably a construction worker going abroad. He is holding similar but little bigger cover. I asked him if he noticed any passport cover with black leather. He said no.

Then I noticed there are three people seating on the chairs that I was seating while filling up the forms. They are holding something similar to my passport cover. “It is mine”, I said. “Look here is my name in the passport and here is the name in the AMEX credit card” I added.

The men said, “We are planning to announce a lost and found. This sweeper lady found it and give it to us” (they are with airport badges and yellow vest). I looked at the passport cover, my USD were there, my hotel reservation letter and AMEX card all in there. I thanked the sweeper and reward her handsomely and went back to my flight.

I was not expecting that I would get back to my USD or the AMEX card. At best I could have found the black leather cover lying in the floor; so I was contemplating to call the AMEX and freeze the account while I was rushing through the walkways.

There are people in Bangladesh who still has the moral values and does the right thing; however we are getting it where least expected. 

We expect that our immigration officers are the brand managers of Bangladesh. They are the first encounter to a foreign investor, a tourist or a foreign businessman. The service they provide can make or break the country.

On top of that they need to understand that they are not doing any favor to anyone; they are paid to do the job right and make the customer happy who paid for the service via travel tax, airport tax etc.

They ought to ask this question to them if they are offered a “rotten mango” for USD$1.00, will they buy it?

Bangla book for children bed time story

Yesterday I picked a book from my bookshelf and read it to my 4 and 3 year old children as bed time stories. This one Bangla and the short story called “Didi O Picklo”. Very nice touchy story of pet dog named Picklo.

I did not like the language and the tone of the story. It was poor, mean, and morally weak with stereotype. I don’t want to profile the writer; however there are events and things that do not go with the culture that we have and we value in the west, I mean in Bangladesh.

No offence to English speaking people of England and USA; however they do speak different English; Culture unquestionably different, similar capitalism but one invade the world with Tea and the other with Coffee. So do Bangladesh and India, I mean east Bengal.

I was reading “Dora”, “Diago”, even dinosaur, animal stories in English and I though why not try some Bangla. I would really love to get some reference on good Bangla children books. It does not have to teach big virtue, a simple nature, basic science stories or math stories or having fun tour, adventure stories could be just fine. Or am I expecting too much? Patriots, please no hard feelings!

More fools expectation ..

Out of approximately 300K applicant paid thousands of dollar as security deposit and willing to buy a piece of land for one’s own place which he/she will call home, not even 10% will get the product. You guessed right, yes, I am talking about RAJUK plots.

The vast majority of the pursuant, more then 90%, will be rejected. Although they have the money and will; although they are ready to invest in the housing industry, they will have no opportunity to do so. In the mean time RAJUK will have thousands of corers Taka of the applicants’ money in RAJUK’s bank.

This money will accrue interest; however applicant will not get a penny of those. I hope RAJUK will not take years to announce the winners and returns the deposits of the unlucky ones; however, I have a proposal of being agile, nimble and execute on scale. This part of my dream big.

While customers are waiting, can we be agile and multiply the scale of the project to ten fold. Can we build a modern model city? I know the real estate in Dubai in the decline and in USA it is hitting nowhere but bottom.
But in nowhere there are so many customers eager to buy.

Hence can we deliver a piece of RAJUK plot to all the applicants? Let’s act quickly and make it happen. We are the same breed of people who architected SEARS Tower, versioned the impossible, when others are doubtful.

People are waiting with money in their hands, funding is no issue here. What you say Buetians? Can Buet engineers architect, design, build such a city in Dhaka to meet customer demand and solve some housing need of the nation?

A fools expectation from RAJUK

Let’s face it, you never turn down a buyer; not especially during the global economic down turn that we are in right now. People who are in private sector, like export oriented garment industry knows how hard they try to keep the LC valid and deliver the product; however if you are in a bureaucratic non transparent organization than you don’t have any motivation to do that; because you job is secure and your benefits is not tied with your performance or productivity.

For example, you all Bangladeshi expatriates probably heard and most of you participated in recent offerings of RAJUK for the UTTRA or PURBACHOL plots. Most of us don’t feel comfortable with the private sector offerings due to their failure to build trustworthy business dealings. Although government run companies does not do a better job; however we kind of feel that our money will be safe in their hands regardless they deliver the product or not.

With the overwhelming response from the people of Bangladeshi origin all over the world, especially middle east, America and Europe, in my estimate there could be as many as 300,000 (three hundred thousands) applicants applied with security deposits of thousands of dollar per applicants. Let me do a simple math:

Number of applicant 3,00,000
Prospectus fee collected = 300,000x1000 (30 Corer Taka) or 300,000xUSD$20 (6 million dollars)
Security deposit collected between
In USD $585 Million= (1500x0.5+2000x0.3+2500x0.1+3500x0.1)x300,000 or
In Bangladesh Taka 30750 Million Taka= (75Kx0.5+100Kx0.3+150Kx0.1+200Kx0.1)x300,000

For my estimation I used a simplified conservative formula, where I assume the following:
a. 50% applied for 3 khatha plots with USD$1500 or 75,000/= Taka (or a mix of these)
b. 30% applied for 5 khatha plots with USD$2000 or 1,00,000/=Taka (or a mix of these)
c. 10% applied for 7.5 khatha plots with USD$2500 or 1,50,000/= Taka (or a mix of these)
d. 10% applied for 10 khata plots with USD$3500 or 2,00,000/=Taka (or a mix of these)

Hence at a minimum RAJUK may collect 3075 Corer taka just from the applicants. If all were collected in USD than the amount could be 4007 Crore Taka. I am not suggesting that Rajuk got that amount of money; but to get some idea we could use the above assumptions and conclude that the amount of revenue collection from the applicants may be 3 to 4 thousands corer taka.

Keep in mind that this huge amount of money collected without even disclosing the price of per khatha of the land. See the enormous hunger of the Bangladeshi people for a piece of land that they could one day build a house. See how much they are willing to give up not even knowing the price of the product they will get.

Where are those sells technique that you learn in your MBA’s from Business Schools? You did not applied any of those; however a huge number of people willing to buy.

Alas RAJUK, I wish you could make more products to satisfy all those applicants! In this global economy nobody has that many customers ready with cash in their hand for a product!

BDR Mutiny and Army honor

Like the nation I am disturbed and deeply shocked by the BDR mutiny and aftermath. During the aftermath, we should use our decency and judgment while sharing the shocking images as well as spreading the vivid details of the brutality. We have to ask ourselves what we want by doing those acts.

I have lost friends of my relatives; my heart goes out to those children who lost their parents, to those spouses who lost their loved ones. May almighty give them the strengths to overcome the losses. For the fallen army officers, may almighty rest their souls in peace.

Just think about the alternative of not taking the control immediately under civil administration; If Army were asked to conduct the hostage negotiation or rescue operation, in my opinion, there is higher chance it could result into more casualty.

Think about it a bit. I myself, not being in the Army, was shocked, angered after seeing too many higher officers, colonel, Lt Colonel were killed instantly. Think about the Army brethren and friends of those fallen soldier would react once they saw those while they are loaded with smoking armors, tanks. Pillkhana would have been a blood bath with all those culprit killed along with many more collateral damages. Chances of many more innocent lives along with the perpetrators’ would have perished.

Once the blood bath in BDR headquarter spread around the country, 46 other BDR camp would have experience the call to revolt and more lives would have perished for no higher purpose. However, if that happen, you never know which way public sentiment would go; if things goes out of control and uncontrollable massacre happen. In worst case it could trigger “emergency rule”!

My heart felt thanks to Bangladesh Army for showing their patience for the greater good of the country. My thanks to the chiefs of the armed forces for their trust in civil administration. I appreciate Gen Moen’s advice not to spread rumors as well as he advised to cross check the armed forces offices even if those information are given by the army officer. Because there are lots of emotions going around. Everybody needs a shoulder to lean during this time.

I would ask everybody to refrain from spreading instigating information, especially to the leader of the opposition party. I ask her, what she is expecting to gain by repeating how much brutality those disgruntle BDR men did to the dead body? I challenge her to take a moral position; not a political one, during this national mourning. Please advice a better path and be constructive during this defining moment.

I hope the investigating body takes quick action to hunt those perpetrators. I hope Army would continue to show trust and patience toward democracy and help civil administration professionally.

Honor is what counts. My salute to all the member of Army for their honor and dignity. Above all showing their commitment for the greater interest of the nation. I hope chain of command and senior officers should continue to help mourning officers and show their outmost restrain and respect while battling their emotions.

I am very glad that the chief of the opposition Khaleda Zia hold a grip on herself and made a political move of moral call on March 1st. During this unsettling time, the country need some sense of unity. While people are drowning with grief and pulling every straw of information out there to comfort the suffering, our national leaders and intellectuals should reflect to their senses.

What is happening to the TV media and the news media that, every expert trying to bring their expertise to explain the incident; but the irony of this comes with their own agenda. Hence in lot of cases it exacerbates the anger and frustrations further more. Although, there are people who “gets it” and trying to helpless people to help. We all needed some support to go through this national loss and grief.

This note also publised as a letter to daily newage in Bangladesh: http://www.newagebd.com/2009/mar/03/fb.html

Abedin-Abdullah proposal for short term job creation

The Proposal: Mandate every state to have mandatory full service gas station like my own state Oregon.At least 4 new jobs per gas station. There should be a recovery gas tax and the new jobs will be funded by this gas tax by the owner. This proposal is a temporary plan and may mandate for next two years only. After two years, this could be extended to fund alternative energy initiatives to reduce dependency on foreign oil.Based in 1997 statistics, there are 126,262 gas stations for the lower 48; hence this plan may immediately create half million jobs assuming on average 4 jobs per station. Although these jobs may be per time and low pay; however it may be better than pan handling or food banks or even social security checks.

Thanks to Abedin Bhai for bringing this up during lunch conversation at the Intel's cafeteria today.

All gas stations in U.S.: 126,889
Alaska: 267
Hawaii: 360
Gas stations with convenience stores: 81,684
The following are the 113,000 stations that have been open more than ayear:
Gas stations with sales less than $500,000: 18,802
Gas stations with sales $500K - $1 million: 24,103
Gas stations with sales $1 million - $2.5 million: 49,482
Gas stations with sales over $2.5 million: 20,465
The data comes from the U.S. 1997 Economic Census "Establishment &Firm Size, Retail Sector" (October, 2000)http://www.census.gov/prod/ec97/97r44-sz.pdf

Senate OKs $15,000 tax break for homebuyers (AP)

http://buzz.yahoo.com/article/1:y_news:a6e612dc8aee93d08e28b9c63c4047e6
I think Senate, House and White House need to think outside the box for a while. They should give a break to the current buzz word "Billion" for every bill addressing the economy. Why don't they talk about the "Confidence" and "Real Value" for a change?

There has not been any catastrophe since 2007. I don't see any house smashed down or burn down or leveled up. Farmers did not stop producing produce. It is not the end of the world. More you panic more damage you are causing to the moral of the survivor. Just focus on your job and do it more efficiently and cost effectively. Add more value to it. And that goes for everybody, house and the executive body, factories and industries, farm and most importantly the money managers, investment bankers. Come on how long you though these fake valuation could last? You enjoyed the ride, not stop blaming and get use to it.

I don't want to keep writing off my tax to my future and my children’s, how much more debt are we going to put on their back? It is easy for congress and those tax dodger to write off future tax today; but boy what happen to the good old citizenship to have the politician in check?

Number one job of the next government – Energy

Some of you may disagree and you have every right to do that. You may argue that Bangladesh is a poor country; people do not have the very basic of enough food, shelter. However I think the biggest catalyst for Bangladesh to infuse job creation and tap the enormous recourses of man power is energy. Energy should be the task one for the new government sworn in January 2009.
Analyze Bangladesh’s greatest achievements’:

Although agriculture and local industry contributed into the national economy and the quality of life; however two biggest foreign exchange earners are Garments and Wage earners. The contribution of these two sectors in our economy is phenomenal. They directly and indirectly created abundant jobs and purchase power. These two created enough liquidity to infuse local bossiness such that money gets circulated and overall national quality of life improved. All these happened due to global free market economy and because of the private sectors entrepreneurs’ who taped into the opportunity. However there is a lot of room to grow if we could improve “time to market” bottlenecks.

The same thing happens for India. India developed a maga project to computer literate one million Indian during 80s. With their English language skills along with computer literacy, the west seizes the opportunity of more profit margins employing the low wage Indian programmer. Indian kept the customer satisfied and business keep on returning.

Today’s global competition knows no limit. Due to the internet, consumers are well informed and want the best product sooner and cheaper. Bangladesh is almost in the lowest rank of the value chain in RMG; hence could not charge more than the minimum. Several factors are in play. I believe, the worst enemy is RMG’s inability to cope with the “time to market” philosophy.

Buyers have to channel only those products to Bangladesh which are less time sensitive and hence have very low margin. Continuous power supply or the cost of onsite power generation and political instability causing seamless transportation discourage buyer to send those high value and high margin product to Bangladesh to process. To get an edge, you not only have to satisfy the factory but support the infrastructure that works hand in hand with the factory.

Look at an example. When Vietnam asked Intel Corporation to setup a sort and assembly plant, Intel Corporation asked for a continuous supply of electricity and a large parcel of land. What Vietnamese government has done is more than what Intel Corporation asked for. They not only supply uninterrupted electricity; but build new roads to the facility, new bus service to the facility from major cities.

What these incentives did for Intel? A satisfied customer, who tripled the investment from 300M factory to USD$ 1B facility along with thousands of high paying Vietnamese’ job. A year later, couple of dozen high Tech company joined Intel’s lead. That is how you earn global business. This gives you a picture of how competitive today’s global business is. We have no choice; but have to be an active competitive member of the flat world. In economic downturn everybody focuses on core competency.

RMG and Man Power are our core competency. To utilize their full potential, we have to increase our electric energy production from 4 GW to 7 GW (7000 MWatt) ASAP. Otherwise your dream for digital country will be only a fairytale.


How can you increase production ?

The energy options you have are: coal, natural gas, petroleum, renewable, hydro and nuclear. You can not depend of imported Oil for all your needs. Look at the graph below on oil consuming countries and their per capita income.

[Courtesy of Andrews and Jelley]


Do you think you can compete with them for all your oil consumption need? You have to find other sources of energy. Grameen Sakti introduced some solar alternative. They are expensive; but may be useful for individual needs.

You may think about wind energy. You have to be little cautious here. Recently in Kutobdia island PDB spent 9 crore Taka to install tiny 50 windmills to generate a max of 1 MW electricity. This is a good start.

Moving forward we may ask help from the leading wind power generating countries. We have to take initiatives to energize pro-business diplomacy.

Let me show you the following graph where you can see the countries took bold initiatives to adopt wind energy. For example Germany is done with wind energy. This country max out the limit. Germany installed wind turbine every possible place to rip the benefit of clean electricity through out the country.



[Courtesy of wwea.org]

Wind Turbine Technology:
A paradigm shift in power generation: The growth of power generation capacity from wind turbine show in this picture for your amusement.

[Courtesy of Vestas.com]

This world's biggest wind turbine generator is currently undergoing testing in the North Sea 15 miles off the East coast of Scotland near the Beatrice Oil Field. This is the first time these enormous offshore wind turbines have actually been tested offshore, and the first time any wind turbine generator has been assembled in such deep water - 44 metres deep. Assembly took place in August 2006.

The German RePower turbines have a power output of 5 Megawatts with a rotor blade diameter of 126 metres sweeping an area of over 12,000 square metres. Maximum power output is achieved at around 30 mph, but a couple of MW are generated even in a fresh breeze. Rotors start turning at around 7 mph, and are automatically braked at 70mph.

We have a good diplomatic relationship with Germany, can we ask them to build operate and sell to this energy hungry country?


What Bangladesh can do immediately?

Coal power plant. We have to be realistic and use our natural recourses. I visited a coal field in Barapukuria couple of years back. We have to approve a plan to generate 1000 MW from the coal of this mine. Currently at the mine mouth 250 MW electricity is being hardly produced. Need to investigate why it is failing to run full capacity. If they can not run it, find a capable company. Let us not waste our limited natural resources with inefficient operation.

Phulbari was a mess. We aught to communicate transparently. Transparency is good for both the business that gets the deal and the government that handles the deal. Phulbari may be a failed example that we can learn from.

Country first is the motto that we should adopt. There will be thousands of people who will be affected and need to relocate to get the natural resources; however the wealth should be distributed in a fair, win-win agreement. The new businesses that the new plant would bring into the community will benefit everybody in that locality one way or other.

The country owns the natural resources underneath its land; not the owner of the land; hence we have an obligation to properly communicate that to the landowners. Landowners should be enthusiastic about the prospect of the overall development that a new industry brings to the area. Due to the secrecy and under the table deals in a non transparent manner, I bet landowners are suspicious and hence the tragedy.

I live in Oregon and Oregon gets 71% of its electricity from Hydroelectric and 21% from natural gas. The cost is 6.63 cents per kwh. There are four dams in Columbia river. McNary Dam, John Day Dam, The Dalles Dam and my nearest Bonneville Dam to generate hydroelectricity of ~6000 MW. These are not the biggest one here in Columbia river. My neighboring state Washington has Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia river, which could have meet the total electricity need of Bangladesh with its 6809 MW capacity.

Total Hydroelectric generating capacity in Colunbia river alone is 24, 149 MW of electricity.

However, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, and North Dakota almost all the power comes from coal. You think coal is old. As you can see in the chart below, about 50% energy comes from coal in USA.

With Barak Obama’s leadership there will be five million new jobs in USA for the clean energy or alternative energy. There will be a “race to the moon” kind of innovation and research. We may pursue a partnership towards clean coal technology.

I believe a presence of US business in North Bangal is strategically very important. It will give a first hand experience to the USA on seasonal flooding and drought caused by the international rivers. This will give a free global media coverage on any injustices that are systematic in that zone.

I insist the energy ministry to take immediate action to formulate a scheme to “build operate and sell” of 1000 MW coal power electricity generating plant in Phulbari. Electricity in USA and in Bangladesh is almost same cost. I pay 6 cents KWH and my father pays 7-8 taka in Bangladesh. There should not be any scope for stealing in power generation in this age.

In summery, there will be 1000 MW from Barapukuria and 1000 MW from Phulbari to meet the immediate need of additional 2000 MW electricity for the nation. The other 1000 MW can come from natural gas, wind turbine, oil and productivity increase of the existing facilities.

For future growth, a nuclear plant in North Bangal jointly with India may be feasible. High level talk’s between the new government of Bangladesh and the Obama’s administration may bring this agenda for discussion in the near future. Obviously if it is owned and operated by USA, that would be preferable.


In conclusion:

I do not know how much productivity loss we write off each year due to power outages. Somebody should do a study on that and place it to the energy department. The human suffering, demoralize employee and heartbreak of the industrialists loosing competition due to disruptive power failure may be very hard to quantify. Not to mention the pain and suffering of students, children and frustration of parents for their inability to provide comfort to the loved one due to unpredictable power outage and load shedding.

We should search for more natural gas and coal. Although, there is a slim chance of getting more petroleum, we should pursue every bit of natural recourses that we get of. Strong diplomacy needed to resolve the technological learning curve.

Bangladesh solved the food problem, garment industry boom solved our clothing needs, and we are still working on shelter, primary education is work in progress. Time to address the electricity need of the country. Electricity is a basic human right of 21st century; not the cell phone or internet. If I have to prioritize then I would always pick an uninterrupted supply of electricity. Electricity brings predictability and confidence, which are key to stay competitive.

We need a visionary here, who can see through the hurdle of electricity generation. The one who could envision what uninterrupted electricity can bring to the economy, productivity and quality of life and happiness of the people of Bangladesh.

With the all cry and complain about global warming may discourage the law maker as well as the government to use coal to produce electricity; however you need electricity to grow the economy and a strong economy could only address the global warming issues and empower diplomacy. Nobody is suffering more than Bangladesh by global warming; however economy is top priority and you may trade off global warming with economy. Energy is your number one job. Make no mistake about it, country comes first.