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Power is being gradually restored across Sri Lanka after a nationwide outage left buildings including hospitals having to rely on generators.<\/p>\n
Officials say it may take a few hours to get power back across the island nation, but medical facilities and water purification plants have been given priority.<\/p>\n
Energy Minister Kumara Jayakody reportedly blamed a monkey for causing the power cut, saying the animal came into “contact with our grid transformer causing an imbalance in the system”, according to the AFP news agency.<\/p>\n
The Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) said the power cut had been caused by an emergency at a sub-station, south of Colombo, and gave no further details.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
“Engineers are attending to it to try and restore the service as soon as possible,” the minister said.<\/p>\n
The CEB said “we are making every effort to restore the island-wide power failure as soon as possible”.<\/p>\n
Hospitals and businesses across the island nation of 22 million people have been using generators or inverters.<\/p>\n
Sri Lanka experienced widespread blackouts<\/a> during its economic crisis in 2022. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n