MQM-P warns of street protests as power cuts drag on

The Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan has threatened street protests over prolonged power cuts, The Express Tribune reported, returning the country's electricity shortages to the centre of political argument.

The report carried the party's warning but gave no date or venue for any protest, and no indication of how long the outages it was protesting had lasted or which areas were worst affected. MQM-P's support is concentrated in Karachi and urban Sindh, where power cuts are a recurring grievance and have repeatedly drawn protests from political parties.

A separate report, by Atlas News Agency, said an explosion in Nushki had cut electricity to parts of Sindh and Punjab. That account gave no casualty figures and no confirmation from any official source, and did not say when the explosion occurred or what caused it.

Nushki is a district in Balochistan on the highway running from Quetta towards the Iranian border, a sparsely populated area through which road traffic and power infrastructure both pass.

It was not clear from the two reports whether the outages MQM-P was protesting were the same ones Atlas News Agency attributed to the explosion, and no official statement linking them was available.

Neither the power ministry, nor the National Transmission and Despatch Company, nor the distribution companies serving Sindh and Punjab, nor MQM-P's leadership was quoted in either report. Details of the load management schedule for the two provinces, of the areas affected, and of any damage to the grid from the reported explosion were not immediately available.

Pakistan's electricity supply has been under strain for months, and outages have become a standing complaint in both Karachi and Lahore. Where a party announcement is carried without a date, and an infrastructure failure is reported without confirmation, the practical effect for households and businesses is the same: uncertainty about when supply will be restored.

The Express Tribune has reported the party's warning without saying what response, if any, it has had from the government or from the power utilities. The Skardu Times could not independently verify either account, and further details were not available on Monday.