After a nationwide blackout, electricity is now being restored in Pakistan, and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has ordered a probe into the system malfunction that contributed to the nation’s struggle with rising energy prices.
The national grid went down on Monday morning, leaving a large portion of the 220 million people without electricity, forcing hospitals to turn to backup generators, and seriously disrupting mobile and Internet services.
In cities like Karachi and Lahore, connection restoration efforts went on well into the night, causing many outages to last longer than 12 hours despite the freezing weather.
Prime minister Shehbaz Sharif apologised
On Tuesday Pakistan Prime minister apologised to the nation because of the country-wide power outage which caused inconvenience to millions of people and plunged them into darkness. He vowed to fix responsibility for the second major breakdown in nearly four months.
Due to a voltage fluctuation in the national grid, on Monday Pakistan faced a major power breakdown, which disrupted normal life and left major parts of the country without electricity.
The prime minister expressed his government’s sincere regrets for the inconvenience our people endured as a result of the power outage yesterday on Twitter.
“I’ve ordered an investigation to find out what caused the power outage. It will be decided who is accountable,” he posted in a tweet.
A thorough investigation of power outage
Energy Minister Khurram Dastgir Khan told reporters late on Monday that Sharif has ordered an investigation into the most recent power outages. A “thorough investigation has begun that will investigate all options,” he wrote on Twitter, noting that the system’s “vulnerability” had grown due to the low power consumption.
Little progress has been made by Pakistan in upgrading its aging electricity transmission infrastructure, despite repeated outages which include a major failure of the national grid in January 2021
Impact of energy shortage on Pakistan
Pakistan has been adversely impacted by a global shortage of energy as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has increased the cost of fuel imports and made the nation’s problems with skyrocketing inflation and depreciating currency worse. An increase in energy prices is one of the requirements for receiving funding from the International Monetary Fund.
Fuel rationing and power outages have been in effect for some time, and a current round of plans aims to reduce electricity use by roughly half. Employees in the public sector have been urged to work remotely, and businesses including markets, restaurants, and shocentersentres have been asked to close earlier than usual.