Power outages were reported across several parts of Sri Lanka on Tuesday (April 8), affecting multiple areas due to what officials described as a “technical failure,” Ada Derana reported on Wednesday morning.
The confirmation of outages is politically awkward for Energy Minister Kumara Jayakody, who on April 7 told Parliament that there were no power cuts in Sri Lanka — a denial directly challenged on the same day by SJB MP Ajith Perera, who produced what he said was an official 33kV manual load-shedding report showing cuts between 6:31pm and 10:59pm.
The April 8 outages now appear to align with Perera’s documentation rather than the minister’s assurance. The episode comes one day before Parliament is due to take up a no-confidence motion against Jayakody, scheduled for April 10. Opposition MPs have flagged the power cut denial as one of the central charges in the motion, alongside the substandard coal admission and the slow response to falling hydropower output at the Castlereigh and Maussakelle reservoirs.
Neither the Ceylon Electricity Board successor entity nor the Ministry of Energy has publicly attributed the April 8 outages to a specific plant or substation. The government has repeatedly argued that load-shedding is not occurring, even as PUCSL has been asked to approve a 15% tariff hike on the basis of rising generation costs.
The April 10 debate is expected to hinge on whether the minister misled Parliament, with the opposition framing the sequence of denial, documentary rebuttal and confirmed outage as a test of ministerial accountability.
