Pakistan’s premier apologizes to nation for power outage

By MUNIR AHMED
Associated Press

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistan’s prime minister has apologized to the nation for a major, daylong power outage that disrupted normal life across the country and drew criticism from millions who were left without electricity amid the harsh winter weather. Shahbaz Sharif on Tuesday offered “sincere regrets” and promised a government probe would determine who was responsible. Pakistan’s Energy Minister Khurram Dastgir defended the government’s efforts and lauded engineers and technicians for their efforts to boot up the grid. He made no reference to the fact that an energy-saving measure by the government had backfired. Authorities had turned off electricity on Sunday night to conserve fuel and efforts to turn it back on led to a system-wide meltdown.