A special commission has been set up to find out the cause of Friday’s electricity blackout, according to Barqi Tojik (Tajikistan’s national integrated power company).

“The work to find out the cause of the blackout will take at least two weeks,” Nozirjon Yodgori, a spokesman for Barqi Tojik, told Asia-Plus in an interview.

Tajikistan was hit by three-hour nationwide blackout last Friday.

The Tajik capital Dushanbe was plunged into darkness by a power failure Friday evening.  The electricity gave out at 6:30 pm and returned at 9:30 pm.

Barqi Tojik that operates the Nurek hydroelectric power plant (HPP), which provides up to three-quarters of the country's power, said on October 30 that there was an outage at the facility.

All regions of Tajikistan, except the Gorno Badakhshan Autonomous Region (GBAO), which is fed by the Pamir Energy Company, have been plunged into darkness by an unexpected electricity blackout just one day before the start of work on stemming the flow of the Vakhsh River for construction of the Roghun HPP mega-dam. 

Russian state-run news agency Sputnik last Saturday cited unnamed sources as saying the blackout affects 90 percent of the country and that there were two possible causes.

The first is that the authorities have reportedly decided to insure themselves during the stemming of the Vakhsh River, while they were carrying out explosions.

The second version is that there has been an accident on the LEP-500 power line, which provides electricity to most of the country, Sputnik reported.