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The Bangladesh Rural
Electrification (RE) Program was founded with a Presidential
Ordinance in October 1977 that established the Rural Electrification
Board (REB) as the semi-autonomous government agency reporting to
the Ministry of Power Energy and Minerals Resources. which was
responsible for electrifying rural Bangladesh. Since its inception,
the purpose of the program has been to use electricity as a means of
creating opportunities for improving agricultural production and
enhancing socio-economic development in rural areas, whereby there
would be improvements in the standard of living and quality of life
for the rural people
Today there are 70 operating rural electric
cooperatives called Palli Bidyuit Samity (PBS), which bring service
to approximately 72,00,000 new connection being made and more than
14,000 kms of line being constructed each year.
Enormous changes have
occurred in areas all across rural Bangladesh due to people having
access to electricity. The magnitude of changes and the impact of
the RE Program is vast and diversified and information documenting
these have become more acute in recent years. All stakeholders,
particularly the Government of Bangladesh and the development
partners need documentation that supports the large funding
requirements that are needed to expand the program further. Given
these circumstances, decisions were taken to have this "Economic
and Social Impact Evaluation Study of the Bangladesh Rural
Electrification Program". this Study was begun in March 2002 with
the selection of the Human Development Research Centre (HDRC), an
established Bangladeshi consulting firm.
This eight-month Study
involved more than 100 male and female qualified enumerators, as
well as a number of data quality controllers. working to collect
quantitative and qualitative data through the completion of
questionnaires during the interview of 378 cases in more than 70
villages/thanas in both electrified and non electrified areas of 23
different PBSs dispersed across the country. in addition, the
fieldwork also included 27 "focus group discussion" and nine "group
discussion with the PBS Board and Members". The four major
categories of consumers namely domestic, commercial. irrigation and
industry were included when preparing the sampling sizes for both
experimental and control groups. Fourteen different instruments ere
designed, field tested, and used for the information collection
phases of the Study.
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