DUSHANBE -- Tajik officials have backed off comments that the energy situation in the country is improving, admitting that electricity rationing is being introduced a month earlier than usual this year.
Electricity rationing has turned into an annual routine in the tightly controlled former Soviet republic over the past three decades. It is usually introduced in late October or early November.
But the Barqi Tojik state energy holding announced over the weekend that rationing will be introduced as of September 22 due to "the upcoming longer and more severe winter period."
The company also explained the move by saying a water shortage at hydroelectric power plants and "the rise of the country's population" have exacerbated the situation.
Earlier in June, Energy Minister Daler Juma warned people to start thinking early about coal supplies to get ready for winter.
Immediately after the announcement by Barqi Tojik on September 21, some residents of Dushanbe, the capital, and several other towns and cities complained online about blackouts and criticized the government for failing to keep its decades-long promise to solve electricity shortages during the autumn and winter.
In August, Barqi Tojik said annual electricity rationing, which usually lasts for six to seven months from autumn to spring, will be scrapped only after the construction of the Roghun hydroelectric plant is completed.
The construction at Roghun was launched in October 2016, less than two months after the death of Islam Karimov, the first president of neighboring Uzbekistan, who had vehemently opposed the construction of the station for years, saying the dam would reduce water flows to his country's cotton fields.
In November 2018, Tajik President Emomali Rahmon officially unveiled the first of the plant's six planned turbines, announcing that "very soon we all will forget about energy rationing."
Tajik authorities said at the time that the $3.9 billion project on the Vakhsh River would not only make the country self-sufficient in electricity, but would allow the export of some of its output to neighboring Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan.
Tajiks have complained that despite the energy shortages, the country has been selling energy to Afghanistan and other countries anyway. Officials said earlier that Tajikistan exported 715 million kilowatt-hours for more than $27 million in the first six months of 2024.
Last winter, electricity rationing was introduced for the first time in Dushanbe.