State minister for power, energy and mineral resources Nasrul Hamid on Monday said that there was no hope of improvement in the present power outage situation before November as gas could not be imported.

He made the remark while talking to reporters at his ministry– referring to the five to six hour power outage throughout the day in and around Dhaka.

He said that the government had to operate some power plants on an alternative basis, due to the lack of adequate fuel supply.

‘We keep some power generation units closed during daytime while others are shut down at night. That’s why the extent of load shedding has increased’, he said.

He said that the current load shedding situation would continue for some more days and things might improve from November.

The state minister had earlier made an assurance that power supply situation would improve after September and there would be no load shedding from the first week of October.

When attention was drawn to his previous statement, Nasrul Hamid said that the demand for gas from industries had increased that prompted the government to divert some supply to them from the power plants.

Production in industries has increased after pandemic, he said.

The state minister also hinted that the situation in energy supply might persist for a longer period as the global situation was different again.

He reiterated his call to people to be more patient regarding power and gas supply.