Pakistan hit by nationwide blackout PAKISTAN was hit by a nationwide blackout for more than two hours after the breakdown of a major plant caused power stations to stop working across the country. While power cuts are common in Pakistan due to chronic underinvestment in infrastructure, outages across the whole country are rare. Late Sunday's blackout occurred when the HUBCO plant in southwestern Baluchistan province, which generates 1,200 megawatts a day of electricity, developed a technical fault, said official Rai Sikandar. That breakdown prompted a "cascading effect" which caused plants nationwide to shut down, said the water and power ministry official. "It was a technical fault in one of our power plants and not in the national grid," he insisted, adding that electricity was gradually being restored across Pakistan after it remained off for more than two hours. Another ministry official said power should be back on across the country within two hours. He said that all 24 power stations in the capital Islamabad are working again and electricity is being restored in parts of all the country's four provinces.