ISLAMABAD -- Electricity outages are disrupting life and business in Pakistan as the cash-strapped government struggles to compensate Chinese power suppliers, complicating efforts to resuscitate the ailing economy.
Waheed Ahmed, a taxi driver in Rawalpindi, complained that the power goes out for 8 hours a day, making an ongoing heat wave unbearable. Mumtaz Baloch, a government employee living in a rural area of the southwestern province of Balochistan, said the situation there is even worse, with just six hours of electricity per day.