Energy shortage forces Central Asians to burn dung

DUSHANBE — With no heating and just three hours of electricity a day, Malokhat Atayeva is struggling to survive the coldest winter in three decades in her small town in western Tajikistan.

“It’s so cold that water turns into ice in the kettle overnight,” Atayeva, a mother of two, said by telephone from Tursunzade, as temperatures outside, normally above subzero, plunged to -20 degrees Celsius.


“We sleep fully clothed, wrapped in blankets. Children stopped going to school because it’s too cold in the classroom.”

Like Atayeva, millions of people across energy-rich Central Asia are scrambling to find refuge from one of the harshest winters in living memory.

Times Colonist (Victoria)