Pakistan suffered nationwide power outages on Monday morning due to a “major breakdown” of the national grid, the power ministry said, with factories, hospitals and schools impacted in all its major cities.
Millions were plunged into a blackout prompted by the failure, dealing another blow to the nation already reeling from surging energy costs.
Outages were reported in locations including Karachi, Lahore and capital Islamabad, according to local media reports, and it could take as long as 12 hours to fully restore electricity, Geo TV said, citing Power Minister Khurram Dastgir Khan.
“Electricity blackout in the country due to sudden drop in the frequency of power transmission system resulting in a widespread breakdown,” the Energy Ministry said in a tweet early on Monday.
“System maintenance work is progressing rapidly,” it added, and a limited number of grids in Islamabad and Peshawar have been restored, the ministry said.
Khan told local media that the power generation system is currently closed down at night since there is less demand nationwide in winter.
“However, when the systems were turned on in the morning today, frequency variation and voltage fluctuation was observed in the south of the country,” he said.
The hashtag #poweroutage was trending on social media with some people holding the coalition government led by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif responsible for the failure.
Karachi-based K-Electric Ltd. confirmed its network had been impacted and said teams were working to resume supply.In Peshawar, a city of more than 2.3 million people, some residents said they were unable to get drinking water because the pumps were powered by electricity.
Mohammad Asim, a spokesman for the city’s Lady Reading Hospital, the largest in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, said back up generators were used to provide uninterrupted electricity for the emergency ward, intensive care units, and laboratories.
“My kids and I could not take a shower this morning because there was no water due to the power crisis,” said bank employee Hassan Imran in Karachi. “They went to school, and I came to the office, without a shower.”
The power ministry issued a statement saying that work was ongoing to revive the system, and the minister said that electricity had been restored in some parts of the country.
Pakistan has struggled with power outages for years, including a major incident in January 2021 when a power plant fault collapsed the national grid, prompting calls for an overhaul of ageing electricity transmission infrastructure.
The nation was also hit hard by last year’s global energy crisis as sky-high prices forced Pakistan to drastically curb liquefied natural gas imports, prompting rolling blackouts, fuel rationing and hikes to power costs.
Government plans seek to reduce electricity consumption by half, and have involved requests for some markets and malls to close early and public sector employees to work from home.
Pakistan is facing a default risk due to fast shrinking foreign exchange reserves, last year’s devastating floods and the global economic slowdown.