Underground power cabling works at Hatirjheel: Commuters’ ordeal unlikely to end soon

Commuters in the capital may have to wait for some more months to get relief from the hazard they have been experiencing due to road digging in the southern part of Hatirjheel for the underground power cabling works.

The delay in the works and the monsoon intensified the sufferings of the city commuters who use the Hatirjheel roads to quickly reach from Gulshan or Rampura to Moghbazar. The roads have turned muddy and the vehicles frequently get stuck in the potholes.

According to official sources, the Dhaka Power Distribution Company Ltd (DPDC) and Power Grid Company of Bangladesh (PGCB) have been laying high voltage underground cables through digging the roads in the area to replace their overhead cables.

The DPDC has completed its works while the part of the PGCB’s works still ongoing and it needs more than two weeks to complete, said an official of the PGCB.

“Now our cable joining works are going on in Rampura area. We’ll need at least two more weeks to complete the jobs,” Badruzzaman Sumon, public relations office of the PGCB, told UNB.

“After completion of the works, the Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha (Rajuk) will repair the roads as the area is under its jurisdiction,” he said.

Then Rajuk will take initiative to repair the roads and it may take more than a month, said a source.

The DPDC started the work in March this year to lay underground cables to replace the high voltage overhead transmission lines in Hatirjheel area.

“We’ve already laid 2.2km of 132 kilovolt (kV) underground cables, out of a total length of 3.5 km. We hope, by next year people will not see any overhead cables in Hatirjheel,” Bikash Dewan, managing director of DPDC, told UNB.

He said that the cables were laid underground through digging the roads in the southern part of the Hatirjheel area and cables reach the Mogbazar through Rampura Bridge area.
The Hatirjheel lake was artificially created in a vast area of Gulshan, Tejgaon and Rampura as part of the city‍‍`s beautification and environmental protection plan. But the overhead cables were out of place with the plan.

Removing overhead cables from Hatirjheel is a part of the DPDC’s larger plan to take all its overhead cables underground from different areas in the city’s central, west and southern parts.
The PGCB is also involved in the works as its high voltage cable will be connected with the DPDC cables to supply power from Ulan Grid Substation.

The DPDC undertook a “Power Distribution System Upgrading Project” to improve its network and system in its command area in Dhaka city and signed a contract with the Chinese contractor TBEA in September in 2019 to implement the China-funded Tk 20,500 crore mega project.
DPDC officials said that earlier they completed the design of the project in which a total of 190 kms of overhead electricity cables will be removed and taken underground from different areas in the city.

Of these, about 115 kms are of 11 kV overhead lines, and 75 kms are 0.4 kV lines, they said, adding that all kinds of overhead electric cables will go underground and no cable will remain visible in a particular part of Dhanmondi area that includes Satmasjid Road, Mirpur Road, City College and Greenherald School area.

The DPDC officials said the project was supposed to kick off in January 2020. But the Chinese engineers who were responsible for designing the works got stuck in their hometown Wuhan following the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic.

Bikash Dewan said once the project is implemented, it will play a vital role in improving the power distribution system and substantially check the unexpected interruption in power supply.