Sri Lankans will be without electricity for at least two hours a day until Saturday due to problems with the country's power stations.
The Ministry of Power and Energy imposed the power cuts beginning Tuesday to deal with a 400 megawatt power shortage.
The Sri Lankan government says the blackouts are necessary after a technical problem impacted its Chinese-built coal power plant and a drought affected the country's ability to generate hydro-electric power.
The ministry said, “under the prevailing situation, it is difficult to maintain the proper balance in the network. Therefore it is essential to impose power cuts of at least two hours to selected areas island wide, or until there is enough rainfall to increase the hydro power capacity to around 25 percent to 30 percent.”