Residents across Punjab, Pakistan's most populous province, are enduring severe electricity outages lasting up to 16 hours a day as distribution companies struggle to bridge a widening gap between power supply and demand. The crisis is most acute in rural areas served by the Multan Electric Power Company, where some communities have reported near-total blackouts overnight, while urban centres such as Lahore and Faisalabad are experiencing four or more hours of daily cuts. A senior government official attributed the shortfall to a sharp reduction in gas supplies to power plants, compounding the problem further by the fact that Qatar has suspended liquefied natural gas shipments to Pakistan until at least 9 May.