Tajik authorities cannot fully supply electricity to their country (according to Eurasianet)

The authorities of Tajikistan, as a gesture of generosity prompted by the holy month of Ramadan, have promised to provide households across the country with at least eight hours of electricity per day.

In text messages sent by the state energy distribution company to mobile phones earlier this week on March 11-12, it was stated that electricity would be available from 4:00 AM to 8:00 AM and from 5:00 PM to 9:00 PM local time. The message did not specify whether the capital, Dushanbe, would be included in this schedule.

As Tajikistan remains largely dependent on domestically produced hydroelectric power, electricity supplies are highly susceptible to seasonal fluctuations. Accordingly, a card-based system has been in place for several winters. The capital of Tajikistan had been immune to these restrictions for the past decade, but the situation worsened last month.

On March 1, entire districts of the country, including the capital, were left without electricity for several hours in the morning due to what appeared to be a major technical failure at the Nurek Hydroelectric Power Station. Neither President Emomali Rahmon nor other high-ranking officials publicly commented on the crisis.

In some neighborhoods, electricity is supplied on a schedule: three hours in the morning, three hours in the evening. In other areas, especially in high-rise buildings, power outages occur much more chaotically.

Despite numerous reports, the energy company Barqi Tojik and the Ministry of Energy deny the existence of electricity rationing. They claim that rolling blackouts are related to ongoing repair work. According to them, due to the cold weather, households consume more electricity, leading to an increase in technical failures.

This has left citizens bewildered.

“If they would just admit that rationing has been introduced and create a schedule for outages, we would at least know how to react. We could stock up on warm water and food. We would have time to bathe the children and charge our phones. Now they just turn it off whenever it is convenient for the person sitting at the control panel,” Gulbahor, a mother of a one-year-old and a four-year-old, told Eurasianet.org.

Gulbahor, a resident of Dushanbe who wished to remain anonymous, shared that her inability to keep her home warm has made her children sick.

“When it snowed, I went to relatives in the village. They have a stove there, so we took shelter. But when I called the energy company, they told me everything was fine, that electricity was being supplied without interruption. But why lie? Just tell it like it is. [If I] hadn’t returned to the city, my children wouldn’t have gotten sick,” she said.

In the villages, the situation is even worse.

According to Idigul, a resident of the Romit district, they had electricity for one hour in the morning and two hours in the evening for ten days. Rural residents are posting on social media that they receive an average of one to three hours of electricity per day.

“This is enough for us to charge our phones, tablets, and watch a little television. Since the beginning of winter, we have been cooking food and boiling water on the stove,” said Idigul.

However, the use of stoves that run on coal or other flammable materials sometimes leads to tragic consequences.

On the night of February 28, six members of one family died from carbon monoxide poisoning in Dushanbe. Among the deceased were the mother and father, aged 37 and 38 respectively, as well as four children aged 11, nine, eight, and six years.

On March 5, three members of one family died from carbon monoxide in Hisor, about 40 kilometers from Dushanbe.