Power supply is gradually being restored in Sri Lanka after a nationwide power outage. Because of the outage, hospitals and various other institutions had to rely on generators.

Government officials said it could take several more hours for power supply to return to normal across the whole country, but hospitals and water purification plants have been given priority.

According to news agency AFP, Sri Lanka's Energy Minister Kumara Jayakody blamed a monkey for the outage. He said a monkey came into contact with one of the grid transformers, causing an imbalance in the system.

Meanwhile, the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) said the outage was caused by an emergency at a sub-station south of the capital, Colombo. No further details were given.

The minister said engineers were trying to fix the problem and would restore power as quickly as possible. The CEB also said it was making every effort to restore electricity to the whole country in the shortest possible time.

Sri Lanka has a population of about 22 million. Because of the outage, hospitals and businesses there were trying to keep working for the time being with generators or inverters.

The country also suffered widespread power outages during the 2022 economic crisis.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.