PM Shehbaz orders probe into major power outage in Pakistan
Pakistan
PM Shehbaz orders probe into major power outage in Pakistan
ISLAMABAD (Dunya News/Reuters) – Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Monday formed a high-level committee to investigate the power breakdown in the country.
Taking notice of the blackout, the premier sought a report from Energy Minister Khurram Dastagir on reasons that led to the major electricity crisis in the country. He also asked him to pinpoint the officials who had showed negligence.
Ordering immediate restoration of power supply, he said such incidents would not be tolerated.
Pakistan s national grid suffered a major breakdown on Monday, the power ministry said, leaving millions of people without electricity for the second time in three months and highlighting the infrastructural weakness of this heavily indebted nation.
Power Minister Khurrum Dastagir told Reuters the outage was caused by a large voltage surge in the south of the grid, which affected the entire network.
Supplies were being partially restored from north to the south, he said, nearly six hours after factories, hospitals and schools reported outages. The grid should be fully functioning by 10pm, Mr Dastagir said, adding: "We are trying our utmost to achieve restoration before that."
The last major outage in October also took hours to restore. A senior ministry official blamed this outage and the frequent blackouts that Pakistan s 220 million people suffer on its ageing grid.
