The Ghorashal thermal power plant occupies 210 acres in Narsingdi’s Palash upazila and has seven units with a combined capacity of 1,315 MW. Gas shortages, unit overhauls and efficiency concerns have kept the plant entirely idle for months at a time.

Petrobangla’s gas supply report for September 9 showed no gas reaching the station, while plant-level generation data from the transmission company Power Grid Bangladesh showed that none of Ghorashal’s units was generating electricity as of September 8. Power Grid attributes the shutdown to the gas shortage.

The lack of generation, however, has done nothing to reduce the Bangladesh Power Development Board’s cost of maintaining the site.

BPDB currently employs 750 staff at Ghorashal. Including outsourced workers, employees assigned to individual units and personnel engaged by various organisations for security and other ancillary duties, the total workforce is about 2,500, most of whose costs are borne by the board, according to officials.

BPDB itself remains a loss-making entity in the country’s power sector and relies on substantial annual government subsidies to remain operational. Although the board owns nearly 6,500 MW of generating capacity, it accounted for just 13 percent of the country’s total electricity generation in the 2025–26 fiscal year.

Energy analysts have questioned the rationale for paying salaries and allowances to such a large workforce at an inactive plant, arguing that a financially strained utility must cut operating costs to compete with private producers.

Private entrepreneurs and owners of large facilities say a 1,300 MW gas-fired plant typically requires about 300 personnel including engineers, managers, supervisors, residential staff and security guards. About 200 are assigned directly to plant operations and the remainder to security.

The Ghorashal plant, meanwhile, maintains more than eight times the private-sector standard, with salaries, allowances and other costs ultimately borne by BPDB.

None of Ghorashal’s seven units currently appears on BPDB’s generation list. Officials noted that when gas is allocated to the adjacent Ghorashal-Palash fertiliser factory, the power station cannot operate.

Units 1 and 2 of the Ghorashal power station, with a combined capacity of 110 MW, have been retired. Unit 3 with a capacity of 260 MW is undergoing repowering. BPDB has guaranteed a $97.3 million loan from HSBC Bank in China for an initiative to raise the unit’s 210 MW operational capacity to 400 MW.

The fourth unit, with a capacity of 210 MW, is also being repowered. Units 4 and 5 operate intermittently when gas is available. Unit 6 has no production activity, while Unit 7 was last operated several months ago, depending on gas availability.

BPDB’s accounts for the 2024–25 financial year show that the third unit at the Ghorashal power plant generated no electricity while undergoing maintenance. The fourth unit produced just 166 MW, while the fifth unit, with a capacity of 210 MW, generated only 13 MW and the seventh unit, with a capacity of 365 MW, generated only 78 MW. BPDB’s own figures therefore show that the Ghorashal plant produced virtually no power last financial year.

Ghorashal is one of the oldest plants in BPDB’s generating fleet, having been in service for more than five and a half decades. Gas shortages, declining efficiency and technical problems have left it out of production, but BPDB continues to bear the cost of its large workforce.

Main gate of the Ghorashal power plant. Photo: Kamrul Islam Kamal

Manzur-ul-Alam, a former chief engineer who worked at Ghorashal for 26 years before retiring as the plant’s chief engineer in 2018, said gas shortages, an efficiency deficit and repeated technical upgrades had hindered operations at the facility.

“These factors keep creating obstacles to running the power plant and a large workforce sits idle as a result,” he said. “If the plant is to run now, the government will have to decide.”

Bonik Barta’s Narsingdi correspondent visited the Ghorashal thermal power plant yesterday to assess conditions on site. Security personnel denied him permission to enter. The plant’s additional chief engineer, Enamul Haque, did not respond to repeated phone calls requesting permission to enter. Local residents confirmed the plant had been inactive for an extended period.

Built on the banks of the Shitalakshya river, the compound features ornamental structures and a resort for foreign and local guests, as well as a school, mosque, madrasah, temple and other facilities.

When the correspondent approached the main entrance, there was a large movement of people inside. But the site’s silence from outside suggested that production was stopped.

With Ghorashal and other BPDB power plants idle or operating intermittently, BPDB’s overall generation costs are rising. Electricity produced by its own plants cost an average of BDT 8.47 per unit in the 2023–24 fiscal year, rising to BDT 9.26 per unit in the 2024–25 fiscal year.

Professor M Tamim, an energy specialist and vice-chancellor of Independent University Bangladesh, said BPDB should address its excess headcount by reassigning existing staff instead of hiring new personnel elsewhere.

“If a huge workforce is sitting idle there, the board should consider how to redeploy those people to other power stations rather than going in for fresh recruitment,” Tamim told Bonik Barta. “There was a time when overstaffing was the norm in government institutions. BPDB has become financially weak. It should now be cutting costs through efficiency.”

A senior BPDB official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the board was transferring surplus personnel where possible. Some employees had already been reassigned and further transfers were planned, the official said, adding that a skeleton workforce remained necessary to maintain the physical site and keep equipment operational.

BPDB executives said work was underway to take strong steps to bring the Ghorashal power plant back into production quickly and to reduce its large workforce.

BPDB Chairman Md Rezaul Karim told Bonik Barta that gas supply to the adjacent fertiliser plant was the main reason the power station was not operating.

“If gas goes to the fertiliser plant, the power station cannot run on the existing pipeline,” he said.

Karim noted that state gas transmission company GTCL was nearing completion of a feasibility study for a dedicated supply line but said “it will take more than a year for that pipeline to be ready”.