NEW DELHI (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 24th January, 2023) Power outages in a number of areas in Pakistan continue after a nationwide blackout, despite the energy ministry's statements about the grid's recovery, Pakistani media reported on Tuesday.
On Monday Pakistan's Ministry of Energy reported a massive outage caused by a "frequency and voltage surge" that led to the shutdown of power units in much of the country. Later that day, the authorities said the electricity supply had been partially restored. On Tuesday, the country's energy ministry announced that the work of all 1,112 power plants in the country was resumed.
Contrary to the government's statements, a number of regions were still de-energized, the Dawn channel reported, citing local electricity companies.
In particular, power supply in Karachi has been restored to critical facilities, including airports, hospitals and water stations, but still lacking for other users, media reported.
According to the Quetta Electric Supply Company cited in the report, power supply in Quetta, the largest city and administrative center of the Pakistani province of Balochistan,�will be restored only by Tuesday evening.
Authorities in Lahore, Pakistan's second-largest city, also expect power to be fully restored only in the evening.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif ordered an inquiry into the power outage that lasted for more than 16 hours. This was the second grid breakdown of this scale in Pakistan over the past six months. In October 2022, power outages affected a number of cities in southern Pakistan particularly the country's business capital, Karachi.
