Following two months of scheduled blackouts, regular power has been restored to Yangon, says the city’s supplier.
Yangon Electricity Supply Corporation (YESC) gave the news that everyone wanted to hear: from June 22, there will be no more two-hour power outages sprinkled throughout the day.
With a heavy reliance on hydropower and a dearth of alternative power sources, Myanmar began experiencing power cuts at the tail end of the dry season.
Now the monsoon rains are refilling the dams, the disruption will stop—for now.
Crossing the road is less of an act of faith with working traffic lights. Surgeries can confidently operate on patients without resorting to phone lights. Yangonites who own air cons can welcome back an uninterrupted Artic blast that will stop them from waking up in puddles of sweat.
But Myanmar is not out of the woods yet. YESC has warned of possible temporary power cuts, and some observers say the National League for Democracy government has not secured enough power projects.
The lack of generating capacity could mean the country will face even worse outages around this time over the next few years.
But hospitals, street and traffic lighting, and gas stations will be powered through separate lines during blackouts, said the Yangon region’s electricity minister Nilar Kyaw in an Eleven Media group report.
