Pakistan has an energy surplus. It gets hit by blackouts anyway
For several years, Pakistan’s cities and villages have suffered from power outages lasting several hours a day. In January, a nationwide blackout plunged the country of 230 million people into darkness. But the problem isn’t energy supply.
This January, much of Pakistan’s population of nearly 230 million people plunged into darkness, bringing widespread disruption to people and industries for almost 24 hours.
“If you go to our government hospitals – which didn’t have back-up facilities – or field hospitals, or small nursing homes, they had to stop all their services,” said Dr. Shayan Ansari, a surgeon at a private hospital in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad.
A similar incident struck last October. Meanwhile, smaller blackouts regularly hit cities and villages for several hours daily.
But the problem is not energy supply.
“We don’t have a problem as far as the supply of energy is concerned in Pakistan,” said Ishrat Husain, who served as an advisor to ex-Prime Minister Imran Khan. “Both outages were caused because there were fluctuations on the transmission lines, which have not been updated for quite some time.”
In 2020, nearly 20 percent of Pakistan’s energy was simply lost during transmission, distribution and delivery.
Pakistan’s energy problems are having a cascading effect on the country’s economy, which is on the verge of collapse. Watch the video above to find out more.
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