Residents of some rural areas of Tajikistan complain that they have not had electricity from 8:00am to 5:00 pm since September 21. Complaints come practically from all regions of the country: Panjakent; Vakhsh; Tojikobod; Spitamen; Vahdat; Bobojon-Ghafourov; Roudaki; Hisor; Shahrinav; and some other districts and cities.
Thus a resident of Tojikobod district, Jonibek, wrote on social networks that in Tojikobod, electricity has been cut off from *:00 am to 5:00 pm and from 10:00 pm to 3:00 am.
A resident of Roudaki district, Dodarbek, wrote on social networks that residents of some villages of the district have not had electricity from 8:20 am to 6:30 pm.
One of the social media users writes that when he asked employees of the local power grid about the reason for the blackout, they said, “We don’t know anything about the reason for the blackout. We cut off electricity on the orders of the leadership.”
Meanwhile, Nozirjon Yodgori, a spokesman for Barqi Tojik (Tajikistan’s state-owned electricity utility company) told Radio Liberty’s Tajik Service, locally known as Radio Ozodi, that there are no restrictions on electricity consumption in the country.
He claimed that power interruptions were linked only to work on overhauling production and transmission infrastructure.
Measures rationing electricity supplies are usually introduced in all regions except Dushanbe and regional administrative centers and they seek to curb the country's rising electricity consumption. The rationing results in the supply of daily electrical power being reduced to 12 or 10 hours. In addition to curbing rising consumption, the move also stems from a decline in the water level in the country's reservoirs powering the main hydroelectric power plants.
