Sri Lanka was plunged into darkness on Sunday after a nationwide power cut that the Government blamed on a monkey.
Energy minister Kumara Jayakody said a group of monkeys had entered the Panadura Power Station south of the capital Colombo.
One of the monkeys landed on a transmission line, causing a power cut, he said.
"A monkey has come in contact with our grid transformer causing an imbalance in the system," the minister was quoted as saying by AFP.
The blackout began at 11am local time on Sunday and was gradually being restored by Monday morning to some 22 million people.
A security guard working at the station claimed he had heard a loud explosion and seen a ball of fire, raising doubts over whether the crisis had been caused by an animal.
“Monkeys jump into the power station very often. This does not seem to have been caused by a monkey,” he told the island’s Daily Mirror newspaper.
An anonymous engineer told the newspaper: “The national power grid is in such a weakened state that frequent islandwide power outages maybe expected if there is a disturbance even in one of our lines.”
Sri Lanka experienced power cuts during a severe economic crisis in 2022, when the island nation was forced to seek assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) after struggling to pay for fuel shipments.
The country’s government increased power prices by 75 per cent in September 2022 and by another 66 per cent in February 2023 to fall in line with energy price adjustments required under a $2.9 billion bailout from the IMF.
