The latest power breakout struck Pakistan on Saturday night, January 9th, 2021 at 11:41 PM, leaving most of the country in darkness for several hours, including the capital city of Islamabad and major cities of Lahore and Karachi. The electricity supply was being gradually restored by Sunday morning in the major cities and then later on in other cities as well.
This latest blackout happened due to “an engineering fault” at the Guddu Thermal Power Plant in Sindh. The connectivity of the plant caused a cascading effect and tripped the Mangla and Tarbela Power Plants as well.
The Federal Minister for Energy, Mr. Omar Ayub Khan said in a press conference: “Our experts are trying to determine the exact location of the fault, which we have not been able to find out. He said that it would take “another few hours as the area is still covered in dense fog.”
Fortunately, no hospital casualties were reported right after the blackout since these places usually have their own sources of power production as well as backups.
The Internet connectivity was also affected as a result of the blackout. According to NetBlocks, an NGO that monitors internet outages, tweeted that the internet connectivity was recorded at 62% of its usual usage since people were struggling to get online. Later, the graph of internet connectivity dropped to as low as 52%.
As a result of the negligence that caused this major power blackout across the country, a lot of people were suspended immediately from the Guddu Power Plant including the management personnel there.
Over the past three years, this is the second major power breakdown in Pakistan. The other notable power breakdown occurred in May 2018 and had also left the country in the dark for a period of over 9 hours.
Even after the power blackout lifted, the usual electricity load shedding was back on track and troubling people’s day-to-day activities. This major blackout prompted a lot of people to avail higher power backups.
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