By Chaturanga Pradeep Samarawickrama  

The Power and Energy Ministry will impose a two hour and twenty minutes island wide power cut during the day and night, which will continue till December 15. 

However, a decision was made to exempt the Southern and Ella tourism zones from a one-hour and twenty-minute night time power outage beginning today. With the scheduled addition of Unit 3 of the coal power plant to the grid on December 15, all tourism zones identified by the Tourism Ministry, will be exempt from nighttime power cuts, and island wide night power cuts will be reduced to 1 hour. However, no power cuts will take place during Christmas or the New Year.  Meanwhile, the Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka (PUCSL) chairman said the CEB had granted permission for power cuts until yesterday.  “No approval has been granted yet for power cuts beyond yesterday. Further, the CEB’s request to three hour power cuts on November 25 has been rejected by PUCSL and only granted a two hour and 20 minute power cut,” he said.