Residents face harsh winter, despite energy plans

Despite international efforts to rehabilitate the ailing Tajik energy sector, current shortages of gas, coal and electricity are forcing people to take desperate measures to stay warm this winter, according to humanitarian sources. Jan Harfst, Head of the UN Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Development Project (RRDP), told IRIN on Friday that energy shortages were not a new phenomenon. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, gas and coal imports to the republic dwindled, and the electricity grid had been neglected for the last 10 years, he said. “Tajikistan’s grid is dependent on hydro-electricity from the Nurek dam [on the Vakhsh River, near the border with Afghanistan] and other reservoirs. With this year’s drought, the water level in the reservoirs is very low, which will mean a very low output this winter,” Harfst said. Shortages in rural areas were critically low and many districts would be without gas or electricity for much of the winter, he said. Energy-constrained people had resorted to cutting wood for heating and deforestation in Tajikistan was dramatic, he added. Although conditions in towns were marginally better than in rural areas, Harfst expected that electricity to the capital, Dushanbe, would be rationed to only a couple of hours a day. A local journalist, interviewed on ‘Tajik Radio’ on Thursday last, blamed the government: “The authorities have been failing to supply residents with gas, electricity and coal. Only hospitals, schools and kindergartens were provided with hot water and heat in towns.” Residents in the northern Soghd region were cutting down trees, orchards and telegraph poles for heating, it was reported. Ready solutions to the immediate shortages are hard to find. Uzbekistan has supplied Tajikistan with natural gas in the past, but poor record on payments and deteriorating relations between the two countries has to an increasingly irregular supply. With the exception of cooperation on regional security issues, relations between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan have hit an all-time low. Uzbekistan has closed its border and insisted that Tajiks apply and pay for visas. An alarming new development this year has been the reported landmining of the border with Tajikistan, which has already maimed 20 civilians this year according to UN sources. Harfst maintains that the chances of a reliable gas supply from Uzbekistan are remote. Tajikistan does have coal of its own. Large amounts of quality heating coke was left untouched in the days when coal was imported from other republics of the Soviet Union. Rehabilitating this neglected coal industry has been an aim of the RRDP programme, but there are significant challenges: “The coal is located at an altitude of 3,000 metres, which makes access difficult. It’s also not easy to excavate when the area is covered in snow and ice for half of the year,” said Harfst. Despite this, rehabilitation of three coal mines in the central Karategin Valley is underway. For a relatively low investment of $120,000, the reopening of the mines next year could begin to meet the heating needs of the 250,000 residents of the valley, which was a notorious opposition stronghold during the Tajik civil war. The majority of Tajiks will have to wait longer for a reliable energy supply. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) and two co-financers, the Swiss Government and the Islamic Development Bank, plan to advance $60 million to rehabilitate Tajikistan’s hydro-electricity stations, transmission and distribution lines. A spokeswoman for the ADB in Dushanbe told IRIN on Friday that the agreement had been signed and a programme implementation unit already established. Faced with an overhaul of the entire grid network, it is unclear whether sufficient repairs can be made before next winter, so that Tajiks would no longer have to resort to chopping down trees. With the tendering process scheduled to begin in January 2001, it is still early days. However, the ADB cautiously predicted that Tajiks could see improvements in their electricity supply within 12 months provided that all goes according to plan.