Not long ago, a petition calling for the abolition of the single time zone in Kazakhstan appeared on the epetition.kz platform.
On 21 June this year, the Ministry of Trade and Integration held the first meeting of the working group to consider the petition against the single time zone.
Our editorial team managed to speak with one of the representatives of the petition's author and find out at what stage its review currently stands.
President of the Kazakhstan Association of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Yevgeniy Yan told us that during the meeting, government representatives demonstrated a complete willingness to listen to the alternative position.
However, a video recording of the meeting's outcomes was not provided, and a recording appeared on the ministry's official YouTube channel only after the first publications in the media, and even then it was edited down.
"This video recording has been edited; all mentions of connections [experts have] with energy companies have been removed, and the speech from a doctor on our team, who spoke about the harmful effects of changing circadian rhythms on health, has been completely cut," noted Yevgeniy Yan.
Furthermore, Mr Yan said that the procedure for reviewing the petition had not been approved, and the opinions of experts who spoke in favour of introducing the single time zone did not contain substantiated arguments, but instead included "subjective, evaluative judgments".
"In this regard, we twice requested materials and references to scientific research — first directly during the meeting, and a second time in writing. <…> Unfortunately, we were informed that access to information about scientific research was denied in accordance with subparagraph 4 of paragraph 16 of Article 11 of the Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan 'On Access to Information'," the expert stated.
Yevgeniy Yan also noted that according to the report on the Open NLA website, among those who voted for the single time zone were the very experts who lobbied for this decision.
"If you remove all the repetitions, it turns out that 96% were against. Bolat Nurkozha-yev voted for himself multiple times. Also, numerous comments show the [negative] reaction of the population to this decision [on introducing the single time zone]," Mr Yan stated.
The expert claimed that the official government position, namely the thesis about improving the nation's health, does not correlate with people's actual well-being nor with scientific research on the topic.
"I believe that conducting live experiments on the population of Kazakhstan is unethical, immoral and irresponsible," concluded Yevgeniy Yan.
Speaking in favour of retaining the single time zone was the Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor of the Department of General Biology and Genomics at Gumilyov Eurasian National University, Bek Zhetpisbayev.
Professor Zhetpisbayev stated that from March this year, Kazakh citizens began living in accordance with natural time and that residents are currently undergoing an adaptation process.
"Adaptation to stress has its own specific types and stages, identified by Canadian scientist Hans Selye. The first stage is the alarm stage. Yes, we have encountered the effect of a physical factor on the body. Nevertheless, our biorhythms adapt to new factors, and our biological clocks are working. We are all different, and the adaptation process proceeds differently," the expert stated.
According to psychologist Yevgeniy Yan, following the same theory by Hans Selye, the body first enters the alarm phase, then the adaptation phase, after which comes the exhaustion phase, which carries the risk of serious health problems.
"Stress is too general and therefore not entirely accurate a description of what is happening to people now. A more correct term is disruption of circadian rhythms due to social jet lag (the mismatch between social and biological time)," noted Yevgeniy Yan.
The specialist stated that people with chronic illnesses, the elderly and children are in the risk group.
According to him, the problem is that dawn comes too early, and therefore a person does not have time to enter the deep sleep phase. In this case, even one hour is critically important.
If the peak of melatonin production occurs around 3:00, when the body enters the deep sleep phase, and, say, in the city of Ridder, sunrise is recorded at 3:28, then it is unsurprising that such a schedule significantly affects a person's life.
Our editorial team decided to inquire how an early working day, proposed by the state as some form of assistance in adapting to the single time zone, would actually affect Kazakh citizens.
"In the conditions of modern life, people will not go to bed earlier, but if they pass a law on an early start to the working day, they will get up even earlier, which will lead to even more harmful consequences," the expert replied.
According to Mr Yan, if such a decision were adopted, the interests of the chronically ill, weather-sensitive people, pensioners, mothers with young children, and even the children themselves, from whom daylight hours have been taken away, are not taken into account.
"Trying to cover one unwise decision with another even more unwise one is the worst way out of the current circumstances. The government needs to acknowledge the haste of the decision made and turn the clocks back," summarised Yevgeniy Yan.
It is worth noting that it is not only people who are suffering from the introduction of the single time zone, but also animals.
According to agricultural expert Kirill Pavlov, livestock farmers across Kazakhstan have found that the change of time zone has forced them to radically change their working routines as well.