Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al- Sisi on Saturday urged the people to be patient on recurrent power outages and promised efforts to address the problem.
Sisi’s public appearance in a televised speech came two days after a major power cut that hit various parts of the capital Cairo and other provinces during the morning rush hour on Thursday. The Electricity Ministry said it was caused by technical problems.
Due to the growing power demands and the fuel shortage to run generating power plants, Egypt has been hit by frequent rolling power cuts throughout this summer, of which Thursday’s hours-long blackout was the most extensive one in years.
Sisi said the government has been working with investors as part of the efforts to make funds available for building new power stations to meet the increasing demand. He also urged the public to be patient and join in the efforts of his administration to face and overcome challenges.
As the former military leader who was elected as president in early June, Sisi has been facing a wide public anger as he partially lifted the energy subsidies and failed to solve the problem of power shortage. The government has recently promised to end the blackouts in the coming four months.
