Giant blackout in Pakistan

Pakistan: in a shop in Islamabad, this Monday, January 23, 2023. The country was affected by a gigantic blackout.

REUTERS - FAYAZ AZIZ

Text by: RFI Follow

1 min

A majority of Pakistanis woke up on Monday morning without electricity.

The biggest cities of the country are affected, Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad, the capital where the power has returned to certain parts of the city but is still unstable.

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Since this morning, Islamabad has been without electricity.

The current returns for a few minutes but disappears for several hours, reports our correspondent,

.

Traffic lights no longer work, heaters and computers in offices are turned off… Only organisations, restaurants and hospitals equipped with generators are operational. 

If the current was partially restored in the morning in the capital Islamabad and in Peshawar (Northwest), in Karachi, the economic heart of the country with its 15 million inhabitants, and the second largest agglomeration, Lahore (10 million) , were still without electricity at the end of the morning.

The cause of the failure: the frequency of the system on the national network which has dropped.

The authorities claim that they are doing everything to resolve this dysfunction.

Pakistan had already experienced a giant blackout

.

Several power plants had been shut down after a technical malfunction.  

In this country of more than 220 million inhabitants, tens of thousands of households are also regularly deprived of electricity due to recurring cuts throughout the year.

Pakistan, plunged into a serious economic crisis, is facing difficulties in obtaining energy supplies.

More than 60% of its electricity comes from fossil fuels.

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(and with agencies)

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• Pakistan

• Energies