The Ecology Department of the East Kazakhstan Region conducted an unscheduled inspection of the asphalt concrete plant VectorSolano LLP following complaints from local residents.
According to the Telegram channel «HALYQSTAN», the company installed an asphalt concrete plant and crushing units without an environmental permit near the village of Oktyabrskoye in the Altai District.
Following the inspection, the company was brought to administrative responsibility, and the case materials were sent to the Administrative Court of Ust-Kamenogorsk for further consideration.
Earlier, on 16 September, the same plant had already been fined for obstructing the work of state inspectors.
Currently, ecologists are checking the activities of another asphalt concrete plant — in the village of Novo-Yavlenka, which administratively belongs to Ust-Kamenogorsk.
Local residents claim the plant was built almost in the centre of the village — less than 100 metres from residential houses. According to them, the facility operates without the required permits.
“Since July, trial runs have been carried out at the plant. They produce tonnes of asphalt – the smell of bitumen, dust, the smell of acid; people can't breathe. Constant noise from machinery both on the plant premises and on the roads on weekdays and weekends. They work from early morning until late at night. Our village used to be in an ecologically clean area, but now we are under threat,” the residents said.
The problem of industrial facilities near residential areas remains one of the most acute in the region. Ecologists acknowledge that many enterprises continue to operate without licences and in violation of sanitary standards, while residents demand that such production be moved outside populated areas.
It should be recalled that previously in the EKR, the former head of the ecology department Mamai Butabayev was sentenced in a case concerning the receipt of a bribe from the deputy director of a road construction company during the reconstruction of a section of a national highway.
Butabayev headed the ecology department for only six months. Before that, he worked in the Abai Region and received the appointment after the arrest of his predecessor Daniyar Aliyev, who was convicted of receiving a bribe.
A month before Aliyev’s detention, the deputy head of the department, Rauan Turarov, was arrested. He received seven years in prison for a corruption offence in dealings with a gold mining company.
Thus, over two years, three consecutive heads of the ecology department of East Kazakhstan have become defendants in criminal cases concerning bribery.