CAIRO, Jul 3 (Aswat Masriya) – In a meeting with the electricity minister on Sunday, Egyptian president Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi demanded that an electricity-use awareness campaign targeting citizens be prolonged.

Sisi said that “rationalising consumption is in the interest of citizens too, in terms of reducing the cost of consumption for them, as well as to ensure that power supplies are sustained without interruption.”

The Ministry of Electricity is carrying out an awareness campaign on rationalizing the use of electricity, especially during Ramadan when electricity consumption heightens compared to the rest of the year.

The campaign distributes energy-saving lamps and advices citizens to use them. The campaign also advertises commercials which urge citizens to rationalize the consumption of electricity.

Last summer, Egypt's Ministry of Electricity declared a "state of emergency" within all companies producing, transporting and distributing electricity. 

The minister had also urged all citizens to "cooperate in rationalising their electricity consumption."

Egypt has been facing an energy crisis for years, with power outages surging in the summer. The peak was during last summer, when power cuts were the most frequent.

Egyptian authorities have often owed the power crisis to a larger fuel crisis and have been taking measures in recent months to diversify sources of energy.