KARACHI: Pakistan’s energy ministry said on Thursday it had “fully restored” electricity after a daylong outage in the country’s southern region, including the country’s commercial capital Karachi.
A transmission disruption in 500-kilovolt line tripped power plants in the south which disconnected electricity in Karachi, Hyderabad, Quetta, Sukkur and other places in Sindh and Balochistan provinces.
The situation also affected some areas of Punjab, including Faisalabad and Multan.
“The power transmission system has been fully restored across the country,” the energy ministry announced in a Twitter post, adding that electricity supply had been increased from alternative power plants which would return to their normal state by Friday morning.
“Nearly half of the 1,000 megawatts of electricity normally supplied to Karachi by the national grid has been provided,” the ministry informed in another post while focusing on the situation in Pakistan’s largest city. “1,000 MW will be provided to Karachi in the next few hours.”
Earlier in the day, the energy minister constituted a high-level inquiry committee to ascertain facts regarding the power breakdown in the country.
A spokesperson of K-Electric, a power supply company in Karachi, said that multiple cities across Pakistan had been affected following a fault in the national transmission system.
“Strategic installations including the airport, hospitals, and [Karachi Water and Sewerage Board] pumping stations have been energized,” the spokesperson, Muhammad Imran Rana, said.
He added that K-Electric’s power generation, transmission and distribution network was safe and fully functional which had enabled the restoration efforts to progress steadily.
However, the power outage invited the ire of the Sindh High Court where Justice Salahuddin Panhwar issued a bailable arrest warrant for K-Electric’s chief executive during a hearing.
The legal team of the power supply company apprised the court about the fault in the national grid, making the judge observed that providing alternate energy supply was also the responsibility of K-Electric.
