Widespread outages despite govt's claim of 'fully restoring' power

A day after a massive breakdown hit Pakistan, Minister for Energy Khurram Dastgir said on Tuesday that electricity has been fully restored at grid stations across the country. However, major cities, including Karachi, Quetta and Lahore, remained deprived of power.

"Power at all 1,112 stations of the national grid has been restored," Dastgir tweeted.

In a televised address at 10am, the minister explained said that there was a "delay in synchronisation" between Tarbela and Mangla power plants. "But with the support of the Power Division, Wapda and other departments, we fixed the technical problem after which power at systems across the country was restored.

"Today, at 5:15am, the system was completely restored across the country," Dastgir said. Energy Minister Khurram Dastgir Khan gives a press briefing following the nationwide power outage in Islamabad on January 24. - AFP

However, the minister pointed out that there will be a shortage of electricity for the next two days. He elaborated that approximately 6,600 megawatts of coal and 3,500MW of nuclear plants would take an estimated 48 to 72 hours to restart. "Until these plants start running, there will be limited load management, excluding industrial users."

Dastgir further said that there was no fuel shortage in the country. "We are considerate of the electricity bills people have to pay and try not to unnecessarily use power plants that require a lot of energy."

Talking about the investigation into the breakdown, the minister said that the government suspected "foreign intervention such as hacking of systems".

"But its chances are very less. There have been incidents previously and we have to rule out this thing," he added.

Dastgir also blamed the PTI government for the electricity breakdown, saying that it had not worked on upgrading the systems.

However, contrary to the government's claims, a number of areas across the country were still deprived of power as of Tuesday morning. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif apologised for the prolonged breakdown and vowed to fix responsibility.

"On behalf of my government, I would like to express my sincere regrets for the inconvenience our citizens suffered due to power outage yesterday," he said on Twitter. "On my orders an inquiry is underway to determine reasons of the power failure. Responsibility will be fixed."

Textile sector suffers estimated losses of $70m Secretary general of the All Pakistan Textile Mills Association Shahid Sattar estimated losses of $70 million to the sector, the country's largest exporter and crucial booster of foreign exchange reserves.

Around 90 per cent of factories shut down on Monday with gas supplies too "patchy" to stand in, he said.

"Each time there is a power cut the mill has to be restarted from scratch, which takes up a lot of time and resources," he told AFP.

"We can't pick up from where we stopped. All that thread that's in the middle of being dyed and treated, et cetera, cannot be used again. So we face massive losses that way."

The economy is already hobbled by rampant inflation, a falling rupee and severely low foreign exchange reserves, with the power cut piling extra pressure on small businesses.