Pakistan’s premier apologizes to nation for power outage

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistan’s prime minister on Tuesday apologized to the nation for a major, daylong power outage that disrupted normal life across the country and drew criticism from millions who were left without electricity amid the harsh winter weather.

Monday’s blackout engulfed schools, factories and shops, and many among Pakistan’s 220 million people were without drinking water as pumps powered by electricity also failed to work. In key businesses and institutions, including main hospitals, military and government facilities, backup generators kicked in.

Power was mostly restored, though some parts of the country still experienced blackouts on Tuesday.

“On behalf of my government, I would like to express my sincere regrets for the inconvenience our citizens suffered due to power outage yesterday,” tweeted Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif.

“On my orders an inquiry is underway to determine reasons of the power failure,” he said adding that the probe will uncover who was responsible.

At a press conference earlier Tuesday, Energy Minister Khurram Dastgir defended the government’s handling of the collapse of the grid and lauded engineers and technicians for their efforts to boot up the system. He made no reference to the fact that an energy-saving measure by the government had backfired.

Authorities had turned off electricity during low-usage hours on Sunday night to conserve fuel, according to an energy-saving plan. Efforts to turn power back on early on Monday morning led to the system-wide meltdown.

“Today, at 5:15 in the morning, power was fully restored,” Dastgir said Tuesday. He blamed the outage on a technical glitch but also floated a “remote chance” that it was caused by hackers targeting the country’s grid systems.

The minister also expressed faith in Sharif’s three-member committee, which is expected to complete a preliminary investigation within days. “We will fully cooperate” with it, he said.

He cautioned that some regions may still face “routine power outages” this week as Pakistan’s two nuclear power plants and coal plants have yet to come fully online.

The outage was reminiscent of a massive blackout in January 2021, attributed at the time to a technical fault in Pakistan’s power generation and distribution system. Pakistan gets at least 60% of its electricity from fossil fuels, while nearly 27% of the electricity is generated by hydropower. The contribution of nuclear and solar power to the nation’s grid is about 10%.

Fawad Chaudhry, a senior leader at the opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party on Monday criticized the government for mismanaging the country’s economy and said the outage was a reflection of the government’s incompetence.

Grappling with one of its worst economic crisis in recent years amid dwindling foreign exchange reserves, Pakistan is currently in talks with the International Monetary Fund to soften some conditions on a $6 billion bailout. Sharif’s government say the harsh conditions will trigger further inflation hikes.

The IMF released the last crucial tranche of $1.1 billion to Islamabad in August but since then, discussions between the two parties have oscillated due to Pakistan’s reluctance to impose new tax measures.

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