According to Power Division's System Control Centre in Katabon, during winter demand for electricity decreases. Daily demand in Dhaka city during this time of the year is around 1200MW. The centre confirms having a shortage of around 250MW daily. During the summer the demand reaches up to 1500 MW they said.

People living in Mirpur and Old part of Dhaka are experiencing the worst outage in Dhaka. There is minimum 5 power cuts daily in Old Dhaka. Supply of Old Dhaka used to be 42MW per hour. It reached as low as 28 MW in the last few days. Out of 55 MW allocation per hour, Mirpur has 11MW shortage causing at least three power cuts every day.

Frequent power cut is causing immense suffering in public life. Production of garments factory is running low in the city. Office work is severely disrupted. Low-income workers including mechanics, laundry owners, motor workshops are the worst sufferer. Cyber café, computer compose centres are also suffering.

"We are having power cuts at least three times during the day. Each time it lasts for half an hour. During the night we have one power cut lasting for more than an hour", said Ruth Lipika Hira a resident of East Manipur.

Hira works for an NGO in the Mipur area. She added, "In the office we have back up power. When the back up expires we have to sit idle"

Faisal Ahmed a resident of Shewrapara said, "It is almost like the load shedding in the summer time. We suffered immensely during the entire summer. The thought of load shedding during winter is unbearable"

"If this is the condition during winter then we wonder what will happen during summer. Things cannot go on like this", he added.

Requesting anonymity a high official from Load Dispatch Centre (LDC) of Power Division, Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources said, "Because of the on going shortage of gas supply, production of several of our power plant is very low"

"Chittagong, Siddhirganj and Ashuganj power plants are not reaching its daily target of power generation", he said. Dhaka city receives electricity from these power plants.

"Currently we are rationing the supply of gas, which is why several units of these power plants are almost on the verge of shutdown", he added.

"If we had 600 MW more for Dhaka we did not have to continue power outage during winter", he mentioned.

The situation is likely to continue till the first week of March.

The LDC official however said, "We are hoping that the situation will improve on the first week of March. Bibiana gas field in Sylhet will resume gas supply by then. The situation will ease after that."