The unusual disappearance of 1.42 lakh tonnes of coal from Barapukuria Coal Mine Company Ltd (BCMCL) and subsequent coal shortage at the Barapukuria Power Plant stemmed from complete mismanagement by two state-owned authorities, an investigation conducted by the Consumer Association of Bangladesh (CAB) has said.

The CAB report, which was revealed at a press conference at Dhaka Reporters Unity (DRU) yesterday, also blamed lack of monitoring by Petrobangla. It said Petrobangla had failed to

ensure proper management of its company, the BCMCL. The investigation, conducted by an independent probe team of CAB, unearthed several discrepancies in the management of the BCMCL, including its failure to maintain a proper inventory record, its illegal consent in selling coal in the open market without meeting the requirement of the power plant, and many more.

The report said it was not an easy task to determine how this scam took place.

However, an analysis of the facts that had been gathered can give an idea as to what could have occurred.

According to the Barapukuria mine authorities, since the mine’s inauguration in 2005 till July 19, 2018, around 101.7 lakh tonnes of coal was extracted from the mine. Of this, around 66.9 lakh tonnes were supplied to the power plant, 33.2 lakh tonnes to various industries, and 12,000 tonnes for the project’s own use.

This adds up to around 100.2 lakh tonnes. So, around 1.46 lakh tonnes of coal should have been left. But there was only a paltry 4,000 tonnes lying in the yard.

The BCMCL authorities said the coal did not disappear because of robbery, but because of technical loss. It means the coal was lying out in the open in the stock yard and was depleted for various natural reasons like simple combustion, being washed away in the rain, blown away by wind, and so on. The report said the amount of depletion of coal in the open depends on many factors. There are rules to measure the technical loss of coal at specific intervals, but the BCMCL did not resort to applying those measures to calculate the loss.

When the CAB investigation committee tried to find out whether the technical loss was measured at specific intervals since production began in 2005, it was found that the BCMCL authorities had no such records. So for the past 13 years, no one even thought about the technical loss and there were no records in this regard, the CAB report said.

The report said the Chinese coal mining firm, CMS, extracts coal from the mine. The BCMCL then buys it from the Chinese firm and sells it to the power plant.

As per the contract between the CMS and the BCMCL, the permissible level of moisture in coal should not exceed 5.1 per cent. If the coal holds more moisture than the acceptable level, no money was to be paid for that.

The power plant even has a modern laboratory to measure the moisture in coal, but mysteriously no one calculated the moisture level in 13 years, the CAB report said.

The CAB investigation found out that since the beginning of coal production in the mine in 2005 till July 19, 2018, the BCMCL had paid the price for 101.66 lakh tonnes of coal to the CMS, considering the coal had 5.1 per cent moisture.