Islamabad, Pakistan – A technical problem has resulted in a blackout throughout the entirety of Pakistan, leaving significant portions of the country, including the nation’s capital of Islamabad, without access to electrical power. The energy ministry issued a post on Twitter stating that there was a drop in the system frequency of the national grid around 7:34am (02:34 GMT) on Monday morning. The message continued by saying that “work on system maintenance is moving swiftly.”
According to statements made by the Minister of Electricity, Khurram Dastagir, to a local television station, the national grid momentarily turns down power producing units at night during the winter in order to save money on fuel expenditures. “However, this morning, when the systems were turned on at 7:30am one by one, frequency fluctuation was observed in the southern portion of the nation between Jamshoro and Dadu,” he added, referring to the two towns located in the Sindh province’s southernmost region. “Due to the cascading effect of a voltage fluctuation, power producing units were turned off one by one.” “We are not facing a severe emergency at this time,” he stated. According to Dastagir, the operation to restore electricity might take up to 12 hours. He also mentioned that only a select few power grids had been turned back on. In the midst of an ongoing economic crisis, a country that is home to more than 220 million people had a power outage.
The government issued a decree earlier this month, ordering markets and retail centers to close by 8:30 p.m. in order to conserve electricity in the midst of an intensifying fuel crisis. Despite this, the appeal was disregarded. This is the second significant power outage that Pakistan has seen in the past four months. During the month of October, there was a power outage that lasted for more than 12 hours and mostly impacted the southern areas of the country, including the country’s largest metropolis, Karachi, which is home to 15 million people.
