Experimental evidence for field-induced enhancement of non-geminate, i.e. distant-pair (DP), recombination and shortening of the DP lifetime, τ D, by almost two orders of magnitude, is given for undoped hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) subjected to a strong electric field, F, up to 100 kV cm−1 at a temperature T = 3.7 K. The interplay between the T- and F-dependences of the lifetime τ D is interpreted on the basis of the effective-temperature theory developed for the high-field hopping transport of charge carriers in disordered materials at low T. The results indicate that the DP recombination event is closely connected to transport phenomena in a-Si:H.