In September of this year, it became known that the prosecutor's office of the East Kazakhstan region had identified violations in public procurement by akimats totalling 1.4 billion tenge.
The editorial board of the FBKK noted that similar agreements, however, are still being concluded to this day.
This concerns contracts concluded from a single source due to an acute need for them to localise and eliminate emergency situations (ES).
An inspection found that at the time these contracts were signed, a state of emergency had not been declared, meaning there were simply no grounds for bypassing competitive procedures.
The akimats unjustifiably concluded single-source contracts, for example, for snow removal, repair of administrative buildings, purchase of de-icing reagents, etc.
As a result of the audit, officials were held administratively liable with a fine of 14 million tenge.
However, recently the akimat of the Altai district of the East Kazakhstan region concluded several more contracts from a single source. Namely, two contracts 'to ensure stable and uninterrupted operation of the equipment of the KSE "Teplovodotsentral of Serebryansk and Novaya Bukhtarma village"' totalling around 50 million tenge.
Incidentally, the supplier under the contracts is an organisation controlled by the akimat - Teplovodotsentral of Serebryansk and Novaya Bukhtarma village.
The contracts stipulate that the method of their conclusion – from a single source – was chosen 'to avoid the occurrence of an emergency situation: disruption of water supply, which could lead to a violation of the living standards of the population of Altai city and the Altai district'.
In other words, the agreements are concluded on an urgent basis, presumably due to the extreme wear and tear of the water supply system. In such a case, concluding a contract via a direct method significantly saves valuable time needed to prevent an emergency.
On the other hand, the high degree of wear and tear on the water supply system means that repair work has been needed for quite some time, but for some reason they only decided to 'ensure stable and uninterrupted operation of the equipment' now, when the state of disrepair of this equipment 'could lead to a violation of the living standards of the population'.
The editorial board of the FBKK sent an official request to the akimat of the Altai district to find out why the contracts were concluded from a single source and specifically with a subsidiary organisation of the akimat, and also to learn what degree of wear and tear on the water supply system was observed at the time the contract was concluded.
Let us recall that recently the editorial board of the FBKK discovered that one of the schools in the East Kazakhstan region concluded a public procurement contract for medical check-up services for staff, while publishing personal data of the teachers and employees of the institution in the technical specification.
The Department of Internal State Audit for the East Kazakhstan region, which we approached to find out what conclusion the department would reach on this matter, found no violations in the public procurement.
Furthermore, in September of this year, entrepreneurs of the EKR complained about an 'administrative barrier' restricting the provision of land plots. According to the businesspeople, a corresponding order from the former akim of the region, Danial Akhmetov, signed back in 2016, has for a long time been hindering the conduct of business activities near the Bukhtarma reservoir.
Incidentally, this is far from the only complaint about the activities of the ex-akim of the EKR. Recently, Mazhilis deputy Abzal Kuspan reported that people are still writing to him about violations committed during the implementation of the street lighting modernisation project in Semey and Ust-Kamenogorsk. The controversial project was personally lobbied for by Danial Akhmetov.