DHAKA, April 29: Bangladesh has ordered officials to strictly enforce shop opening times to minimise electricity consumption as the country reels from soaring summer temperatures and constant blackouts.

The military-backed emergency government slapped the ban on shops opening after 8 pm in February in an attempt to divert power for irrigation of farmers’ crops.

But in recent months, outlets in Dhaka have begun to flout the order, compounding power shortages that the World Bank says require $10 billion investment over a decade.

“The government has ordered the officials of the power departments to intensify their enforcement drives to ensure that the shopping malls are closed by 8 pm every day,” said Afrajur Rahman of the ministry of power, energy and mineral resources.“Some shopping malls, in defiance of the government order, have been keeping their businesses open late and that ultimately affects the power load management,” he added.

Rahman said extra power would be needed in rural areas until May 10 when the current Boro harvest ended.

In northern Bangladesh, farmers often receive power for only a few hours a day, if at all.

In 2006, anger at the constant power cuts boiled over into a series of violent protests in the northern village of Kansat in which at least 18 people died in clashes with police.

Following the riots, power minister Iqbal Hasan Mahmud told reporters it would take at least three years to ease the yawning shortfall in supply and demand fuelled by steady annual growth since the early 1990s.

He was promptly removed from his job. Four months later his replacement was fired too. Experts say far-reaching plans are needed to tackle the nation’s power crisis.

The World Bank has put Bangladesh’s power shortfall at 700 to 800 megawatts a day, rising to 2,000 megawatts when aging plants are shut for maintenance.—AFP