ISLAMABAD (AP) – A major technical failure in Pakistan’s energy production and distribution system has caused a massive power outage that plunged the country into darkness overnight, the energy minister said.
Hours after the interruption late on Saturday, Energy Minister Omar Ayub said on Twitter that power was being restored in stages, starting with Islamabad. He said on Sunday that power had been restored in much of the country.
The outage was initially reported on social networks by residents of large urban centers, including Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad and Multan. The minister and his spokesman then went on Twitter to update the country.
Ayub urged people to be patient. He said the cause of the power outage is being investigated and work is underway to set fire to the Tarbela power plant in northwestern Pakistan, which will lead to the restoration of energy in the rest of the country in stages.
Ayub said in a press conference on Sunday that the power plant in Guddu, in the south of Sindh province, developed a malfunction at 23:41 which triggered the shutdown of other plants in a few seconds.
Zafar Yab, a spokesman for the Ministry of Energy, later said that the Tarbela and Warsak plants, both in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, had returned online and that power was being restored to the transportation system.
Yab said that the restoration of power in all areas of the country will still take some time.
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Associated Press writer Asim Tanveer of Multan, Pakistan, contributed to the report.
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