In Pakistan, electricity is back on Tuesday, January 24, in most cities, a day after a huge blackout that occurred in a large part of this country of 220 million inhabitants.
Power largely returned to the megacities of Karachi and Lahore overnight, but brief brownouts still continued locally. Otherwise, the capital, Islamabad, and other cities including Rawalpindi, Quetta, Peshawar and Gujranwala have reported their power back. Some rural areas of Pakistan, however, were waiting to be supplied with energy again.
The outage began on Monday, January 23, around 07:30 local time (2:30 UT). The failure is linked to a cost reduction measure taken in the context of an economic crisis. Mobile phone services were also disrupted due to the outage, the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority tweeted. Energy Minister Khurram Dastgir Khan said late Monday that power was gradually being restored.
Electrical frequency variation
According to Mr. Khan, the outage was caused by a variation in the electrical frequency on the national grid, when the power generation units restarted on Monday morning, temporarily switched off at night in winter to save fuel. The country’s electricity system is a complex and fragile network where malfunctions can quickly multiply, and power cuts are a recurring problem in Pakistan.
Most hospitals, industries and government institutions are equipped with generators. But households and small businesses often do not have the means to afford such equipment. In the north, temperatures were expected to fall below 0°C on Monday evening. Gas heating is the most common, but is also not always reliable, with frequent load shedding due to a shortage of gas.
A faltering economy
Pakistan’s economy is already faltering with rampant inflation, a plummeting national currency – the rupee – and low foreign exchange reserves. Such a power outage only increases the pressure on small businesses. In Rawalpindi, a neighboring city of Islamabad, in schools, lessons often took place in the dark, for those without battery lighting.
In Karachi (south), where the temperatures were higher, a trader told AFP that he feared that his entire stock of dairy products would be lost due to lack of refrigeration. And Khurrum Khan, a 39-year-old printer, saw the orders piling up, without being able to fulfill them. Electricity problems are a permanent curse that our governments have failed to get rid of “, he regretted. In January 2021, a similar outage plunged most of the country into blackout, after a technical malfunction in the south triggered a chain reaction.
(With AFP)
►Also read : Giant blackout in Pakistan