National_Industrial_Scenario

Housing and real-estate businessmen have claimed that 5000 flats could not be handed over to their clients due to lack of power and gas connections. Speakers at a roundtable on Saturday said that the country's housing industry was facing a major crisis due this crisis. On Saturday, monthly 'Mukta Akash' organised the roundtable on energy crisis affecting the real estate sector. While reading out the keynote paper, Engineer Mohammad Abdul Awal, former president of the country's realtors association, mentioned that they were in a fix not being able to hand over apartments. "The government has imposed a new condition of setting up solar panels to get new power connection, which has raised the cost for building owners." He alleged that a lot of owners were not getting power connections despite paying for the demand note. He urged the government to supply power and gas connections without any condition to protect the housing industry. Addressing the roundtable, state minister for power Mohammad Enamul Haque said that the government was working to resolve the energy crisis. "It is possible that the crisis may be resolved by 2012,"he said. Professor Hossain Mansur, chairman of state-run Petrobangla, said that gas pipes were set up soon after Bangladesh's independence many years ago and those pipes were unable to cope with the increased transmission pressure as demand had also increased. "We are in the process of setting up new pipes." He said that it is possible to increase gas production and meet the crisis with new supplies from new wells.