Renk in South Sudan’s Upper Nile state has been experiencing electrical blackouts, which also affected the water supply system and other facilities in the town.

A local source said on Sunday that about 12 residential areas in the town were experiencing outages owing to malfunction of generators in the main power station.

Citizens expressed discontent about water shortages and also the stoppage of services at medical laboratories in health facilities as well as phone networks cut since last Friday, according to the same source.

“The technical problem in the power station is not likely to be repaired soon, because all the engineers and staffs have gone for Eid al-Fitr holiday,” he said.  

Renk is one of the only towns in South Sudan with an urban power service. Citizens in most of South Sudan including most of the capital Juba rely on privately owned diesel generators for electricity. 

The northernmost town of South Sudan, Renk saw some fighting since the start of the civil war in December, but it was not destroyed as were other towns in the same state.