KULOB, January 12, 2012, Asia-Plus -- 150 villages in eight districts of the Kulob region in Khatlon province have not yet been connected to the country’s power system.

Mirzo Ismoilov, the head of the Kulob power supply network, told Asia-Plus Thursday afternoon that the majority of those villages had sprung up in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when descendants of those who had been relocated to the plains had begun to return to the mountains.

We will recall that in the 1930s, the authorities had ordered the resettlement of Tajik mountain people to the plains to boost cotton production.  Many of those migrants subsequently returned to the mountains.

Ismoilov says a number of problems have complicated the construction of electricity transmission lines to those villages.  “The majority of these villages have not more than five or eight households each and there are villages, where only four people are living,” said he.  “It is necessary to construct 6- or 11-kilometer power transmission lines to these villages, install separate transformers and construct substations.  All this requires significant financial investment. ”

However, Barqi Tojik (the state-owned utility responsible for generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity in Tajikistan) is taking measures to tackle this problem, he noted, adding that some twenty villages in the Shouroobod and Baljuvon districts have been connected to the country’s power system.