Authorities tonight indefinitely suspended power generation at Barapukuria coal-fired power plant in Dinajpur due to a crisis of fuel.

Operations of the power plant in Parbatipur was suspended at 10:30pm, Abdul Hakim, chief engineer at the plant told our Dinajpur correspondent.

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Just vanished

Concerned officials earlier said that the plant was going to shut down in a couple of days for an indefinite period due to its fuel mysteriously disappearing from a yard.

Two units of the plant, with the capacity of 125MW each, have already been turned off while the other more efficient unit, with a capacity of 275MW, was starving of fuel and was only producing 150MW, said Mahbubur Rahman, superintendent of the power plant.

The plant, which depends on coal supplies from Barapukuria Coal Mining Company Ltd (BCMCL), requires 3,300 tonnes of coal a day but now it is using just 600 tonnes.

The problem surfaced after the mysterious disappearance of 1.42 lakh tonnes of coal, worth about Tk 227 crore, from the BCMCL yard, officials said.

The matter of coal going “missing” came to light on Monday when Abu Sayeed, a board member of Power Development Board (PDB), visited the mine.

At a meeting on June 20 between Petrobangla and PDB officials in the capital, a mine official said coal stock on the yard was around 1.80 lakh tonnes. But in reality, the coal yard was virtually empty.