In a gesture of generosity apparently occasioned by the holy month of Ramadan, the authorities in Tajikistan have pledged to make certain that households across the entire country get at least eight hours of electricity daily.

A note sent by the state-run power distribution company via mobile phones earlier this week stated that electricity will be available from 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. and from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. local time.

The message does not specify if the capital, Dushanbe, is covered by this timetable.

Due to Tajikistan still being heavily reliant on domestically produced hydropower, the supply of electricity is strongly subject to seasonal fluctuations. A rationing regime has accordingly been in force for a number of winters now.

While Dushanbe has been immune from these restrictions over the past decade or so, things took a turn for the worse last month. On March 1, entire swathes of the country, including the capital, were left without electricity for several hours on end in the morning as a result of what appears to have been a major technical malfunction at the Nurek hydropower plant.

Officials have not yet confirmed what caused the blackout, but Dushanbe households have been suffering intermittent outages ever since that time.

Neither President Emomali Rahmon nor any other top officials have commented publicly on the crisis.

In some neighborhoods, power is provided according to a schedule: three hours in the morning, three hours in the evening. In other areas, particularly in high-rise buildings, the blackouts are implemented far more erratically.

For the longest time that people can remember, street lighting is now not turned on at night.

In the face of ample evidence, power utility Barki Tojik and the Energy Ministry deny any power rationing is happening. They have said the rolling blackouts are connected with ongoing repair work. Because of the cold weather, households are using more electricity, causing more technical malfunctions to occur, they have said.

This has left citizens perplexed.

“If they would just acknowledge that rationing had been introduced and would make a schedule of shutdowns, then 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 are just turning it off when it’s convenient for the person sitting at the control panel,” Gulbahor, the mother of one- and four-year-old children, told Eurasianet.

Gulbahor, a Dushanbe resident who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that her inability to keep the house warm has caused the children to fall ill.

“When the snow fell, I went to my relatives in the village. They have a stove there, so we took refuge. But when I called the power company, they told me everything was fine, that electricity was being supplied uninterruptedly. But why lie? Just tell it like it is. [If I had not] returned to the city, my children would not have got sick,” she said.

Things are worse in the villages.

According to Idigul, a resident of the Romit district, they have been on one hour of electricity in the morning and two in the evening for a period of 10 days. People in rural areas have written on social media that they are on average getting between one and three hours of power supply a day.

“This is enough for us to recharge our phones, tablets, and watch TV a little. We have been preparing food, boiling water on our stove since the beginning of winter,” Idigul said.

But the use of stoves fueled by coal or other flammable items sometimes leads to tragic consequences. On the night of February 28, six members of one family died from carbon monoxide poisoning in Dushanbe.

The fatalities comprised the mother and father, 37 and 38, respectively, and four children, aged 11, nine, eight and six.

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