ROGUN – Tajikistan on Friday inaugurated a $3.9 billion hydro-electricpower plant, a mega project that will enable the impoverished country toeliminate domestic energy shortages and export electricity to Afghanistanand Pakistan.
Built on the Vakhsh River in southern Tajikistan, the plant championed byPresident Emomali Rakhmon is expected to reach a height of 335 metres(1,099 feet) in a decade, becoming the world’s tallest hydro-electric dam.
The first of six turbines in the Rogun hydroelectric dam goes online onFriday, with the power plant expected to reach capacity of 3,600 megawatts— the equivalent of three nuclear power plants — when completed.
At present, Rogun still resembles a vast construction site, with rockyearth covering the territory from which the powerful Vakhsh flowing throughthe Pamir mountains was diverted.
In 2016, Rakhmon, who is a former collective farm boss, climbed into abulldozer at a groundbreaking for the dam, in a sign of the president’spersonal attachment to the project.
It will double energy production in the country of nearly nine millionpeople, alleviating a long-lasting, debilitating national energy deficit.Surplus energy will be sold to neighbours such as Afghanistan, Pakistan andUzbekistan.
Plans to build a dam in southern Tajikistan date back to the Soviet era,but the project was scaled up following the breakup of the Soviet Union in1991.
In 2017, Tajikistan raised $500 million from an inaugural internationalbond to help finance the construction.
Authorities hope that once the dam goes online it will generate money tofinance further construction. ‘National consolidation’
Observers say the project is hugely significant for a country that losttens of thousands of people in a civil war in the 1990s when rebel groupsincluding Islamists rose up against the government.
Rogun has become “a concept for national consolidation,” political analystAbdugani Mamadazimov told AFP.
There have been calls by public figures to rename the dam after Rakhmon.
Saidjafar Usmonzoda, chairman of the Democratic Party of Tajikistan whichis represented in parliament, told AFP such a tribute would only be fittinggiven Rakhmon’s “heroic accomplishment” making Rogun a reality.
If it ever reaches the planned height of 335 metres, the dam will be 30metres taller than the recently-built Jinping-I Dam in China and 35 metrestaller than Tajikistan’s own Soviet-era Nurek dam, also on the Vakhsh River.
The project overseen by the Italian company Salini Impregilo has a numberof risks.
Observers warn that the Tajik authorities do not appear to concernthemselves with the environmental sensitivities of Rogun, given Rakhmon’sclose involvement.
Rogun is located “in a highly seismic area, and several geologicalstudies have warned about the risks of building such a large dam in thissetting,” Filippo Menga, a lecturer in human geography at theUniversity of Reading in the United Kingdom, told AFP.
Geopolitical tensions surrounding the project have, for the moment,subsided in a region that suffers from water scarcity.
Uzbekistan’s late leader Islam Karimov once hinted that his downstreamagriculture-dependent country might go to war over Rogun and a similarproject in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan.
But Uzbek opposition to the dam has evaporated since Karimov’s death in2016 and in an incredible turnaround, the 32 million population couldbecome one of Rogun’s early clients.
Speaking ahead of the launch, deputy head engineer Sukhrob Ochilov summedup the celebratory mood surrounding the keystone project.
“I have been waiting for this moment,” he said.
“Rogun coming online means the construction of new factories, economicprogress and jobs for our people.” – APP/AFP