Cox’s Bazar Correspondent

A Panama-flagged ship carrying 70,000 tonnes of coal from Indonesia arrived at the Matarbari coal-based power plant in Maheshkhali of Cox’s Bazar on Wednesday morning.

As a result, the authorities are expecting to resume production at this power plant on December 1 after being closed for a month.

Saifur Rahman, chief engineer of Coal Power Generation Company, said that the unloading of coal has started from the coal-laden ship that arrived on Wednesday morning. This is the first shipment of coal imported by the Meghna Group.

He said this power plant of two units of 1,200 megawatts will go into production again on Sunday due to the supply of coal.

Earlier, the two-unit power plant was completely shut down on 31 October due to a coal shortage.

Manowar Hossain Majumder, the plant's supervisory engineer, informed that the original agreement with Japan's Sumitomo facilitated the import of 22 lakh 5 thousand tonnes of coal for the plant's commissioning. The first unit of the Tk51,854 crore plant started operation in July 2023, while the second unit became operational in December 2023.

According to project officials, the tender of the Coal Power Generation Company was supposed to be called before the completion of the coal supplied by Sumitomo, but due to the corruption of the top officials, the coal purchase was stopped.

Sources alleged the Coal Power Generation Company had invited international tenders for supply of coal for three years. But project director Abul Kalam Azad delayed by 10 months in giving the facility to Meghna Group's Unique Cement consortium.

Lastly, the High Court imposed a six-month ban on the import of coal in July following a petition filed by a consortium consisting of Bashundhara, Equintia and Athro, which raised concerns about irregularities. As a result, uncertainty surrounding coal imports ensued.

Despite having many challenges, all necessary processes have now been completed, enabling the current coal shipment.

Now plant officials are optimistic that production will resume within three to four days, contributing electricity to the national grid.