Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh, is one of the fastest growing cities in Southern Asia, having population of more than 13 million, and is expected to accommodate more than 20 million by 2025. This growth has been accompanied by the growth of urban slums and the subsequent challenges to access basic urban services like water, sanitation, clean energy, and transport for the urban poor. Despite its importance for basic survival, electricity supply is not recognized as a basic urban service, as a result of which, the poverty alleviation and basic infrastructure provision programs have not addressed this issue completely. On the basis of a stakeholder interaction approach, following a set of logically sequenced questions to assess the availability, accessibility, affordability, reliability and continuity of usage of electricity, this study assesses the current status of electricity access in an urban poor area of Dhaka and identifies barriers to electricity access from both demand and supply side. Barriers specific recommendations are also suggested based on the experiences from field visit and the best practices outside Bangladesh are also identified.
References
In Bangladesh, the definition of slum by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) is “Predominantly very poor housing structure, Jhupri, Tong, chhai, tin shed, semi-pucca flimsy structure, dilapidated building in bad condition, very high housing density, grow on govt./semi govt. vacant land and public owned places, abandoned buildings/places or by the side of the road, having poor sewage and drainage or even it has no such facilities, inadequate, unhealthy drinking water supply, prevailing unhealthy atmosphere, insufficient or absence of street lighting, little or no paved street, inhabited by poor, uneducated and below poverty level people.”
Sample size, , where, n = sample size, N = Total number of households, and e = Limited error = 10%.
Consider a typical slum house where a 25 W CFL and a 70 W ceiling fan is used for monthly fee of 150 (light) + 150 (fan) = 300 BDT. Considering 10 hours daily usage time and 30 days a month, a typical slum house consumes {(25 W × 10 h × 30 day/1000) kWh/month + 70 W × 10 h × 30 day/1000) kWh/month)} = 28.5 kWh/month which means urban poor pay (300 BDT/month ÷ 28.5 kWh/month) = 10.5 BDT/kWh, but the domestic tariff rate is 3.33 BDT per unit (0–75 unit) which means slum residents pay more than 3 times higher than normal tariff rate set by the Bangladesh Energy Regulatory Commission (BERC).
Regarding energy use, first, the average value of end use energy of each fuel (electricity, kerosene, rechargeable batteries, and candles) in each decile group is determined. Then the average end use energy of all the fuels in each decile group is added to estimate the total end use energy consumption.
To draw the graph, the per capita monthly income of the urban poor household is organized according to the order of their income and then divided into ten groups of equal size, so that each decile then has 10 percent of the households. For this study, 100 households have been considered which means each decile has 10 households.
