Karachi, Jan 10: A massive power blackout has been reported in Pakistan late on Saturday night, which plunged several cities into darkness, reported Dawn. The power outage was reported shortly before midnight almost simultaneously in many cities. Residents of Karachi, Rawalpindi, Lahore, Islamabad, Multan and others faced the blackout, the reports stated.
In a tweet, Islamabad Deputy Commissioner Hamza Shafqaat said the blackout was caused by the National Transmission & Despatch Company (NTDC) system tripping.
“NTDC system tripped. It will take sometime before everything gets back to normal,” he tweeted.
Dawn reported Special assistant to the Prime Minister Shahbaz Gill saying that the energy minister Omar Ayub Khan and his entire team were working on the issue of the breakdown. He also said citizens would be updated on the situation soon.
Meanwhile, Khan on Twitter said that the “frequency in the power distribution system suddenly dropped from 50 to 0 which caused the blackout”.
“We are trying to ascertain what caused the drop in frequency,” he said while requesting the nation to exercise patience.
“All of our teams have reached their respective stations. As the Minister for Power, I am personally overseeing the work for the restoration of power. We will keep you updated periodically over the progress in power restoration,” he added.
Initial reports suggest there was a fault in the Guddu power plant in Sindh province at 11.41 pm, the Energy Ministry tweeted.
The fault tripped the high transmission lines and this resulted in the system frequency to drop from 50 to zero in less than a second, causing power plants to shut down, according to the ministry.
As Pakistan was plunged into darkness, the incident has evoked humourous reactions from social media users in the country.
Soon after the breakdown, the term ‘blackout’ became a top trend on Twitter with over 52,800 tweets till 2:18 am.
Later, Khan posted a series of tweets regarding the restoration of power in several grids.
