Power restoration is underway in Sri Lanka following a nationwide outage that forced various buildings, including hospitals, to depend on generators. Officials indicate that it may take several hours to fully restore electricity throughout the country, with medical facilities and water purification plants receiving priority attention.
Energy Minister Kumara Jayakody has reportedly attributed the outage to a monkey that interfered with a grid transformer, resulting in a system imbalance, as reported by the AFP news agency.
The Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) stated that the outage stemmed from an emergency situation at a sub-station located south of Colombo, but did not provide additional details.
The minister mentioned that engineers are actively working to resolve the issue and restore service promptly. The CEB emphasized its commitment to addressing the island-wide power failure as quickly as possible.
In the meantime, hospitals and businesses across the nation, which has a population of 22 million, are relying on generators or inverters. Sri Lanka had previously experienced extensive blackouts during its economic crisis in 2022.