On 19 June, a press conference took place in Almaty, where a group of civil activists called on the antimonopoly authorities to conduct an inspection of the "Sergek" system.
According to some media outlets, the activists demanded that a relevant petition on the ePetition.kz website be considered. In response, the Antimonopoly Committee informed the petition's authors that their appeal falls outside the competence of the department.
"In our view, a petition must either be approved or rejected. But it is neither being considered nor rejected; instead, they are redirecting us 'to the relevant authorities,' although those authorities have nothing to do with it," stated activist Askhat Bersalimov.
According to Askhat Bersalimov, recordings from CCTV cameras are not fully protected, and given that the system collects personal data, a potential leak is quite plausible.
Furthermore, the activists believe the system does not account for the human factor, making it overly formalistic.
"For example, a person wants to pull into a courtyard, but a rubbish collection truck is stopped in front of them. There is no way to drive around it; there is only a solid line. The driver cannot wait for hours to get past all the traffic. At that moment, Sergek records an offence, it immediately goes into the database, and the driver is automatically issued a fine," explained Mr Bersalimov.
The petition's authors also insist that "Korkem Telecom" and "Open Technologies Group", selected for the project's implementation in 2017, belong to one person — Aset Akhmetov, which, in their view, makes Sergek Group a monopoly.
It is worth recalling that representatives of Sergek Group have repeatedly denied the fact of a monopoly in the project. In particular, it recently became known that the company attracted investment from Freedom, which will subsequently allow Timur Turlov to become one of the shareholders of Sergek Group.
In any case, it is still somewhat premature to assume that Sergek is disclosing the personal data of Kazakh citizens, just as it is to judge the true motives of the activists insisting on an inspection of the system.
It is worth noting that the FBRK editorial team recently reported on a new joint project between Freedom Telecom and Sergek Group — an intelligent control system (ISCAR). The project is planned for implementation within the framework of a PPP agreement.
The primary function of ISCAR is to monitor the transportation of goods across the entire country, as well as to control the weight of goods vehicles.