The city bus depot «Almatyelectrotrans» plans to spend 5 billion tenge from budget funds on the repair and maintenance of buses.
According to media reports, applications for the competition began being accepted on 3 September and will close on 18 September.
“The customer is Almatyelektrotrans LLP; the description is work on the repair of motor vehicles; additional characteristics are work on the repair and warranty maintenance of Golden Dragon brand buses; the planned amount is 5,083,321,740 tenge”, states the description of the lot posted on the public procurement portal.
For context, in July last year, residents discovered a “bus graveyard” in the Zhetygen settlement of the Almaty region. Citizens were outraged that hundreds of buses, which had recently been operating on city routes, were sitting idle while the city faced a transport shortage.
In response, the bus depot «Almatyelectrotrans» reported that, following the President’s instruction on the need to transition to environmentally friendly modes of transport, a decision was made to transfer the diesel buses to the balance of the Almaty region akimat.
It also emerged that in 2023, Almatyelectrotrans LLP entered into an agreement with Zhanarna LTD for the transportation of 595 buses worth 89 million tenge.
It was reported that the founder of Zhanarna LTD is Gaukhar Omarova – the wife of Aydin Omarov, who leases the so-called “bus graveyard” territory to Almatyelectrotrans LLP for 320 million tenge per year. According to publicly available data, in 2021 Omarov received 54 million tenge from Almatyelectrotrans LLP, and in 2022 the amount increased to 159 million tenge. These payments are related to bus storage services on the same site.
Meanwhile, in October 2022, it was reported that the former general director of «Almatyelectrotrans», Bekmyrza Igenberdinov, had been detained and accused of receiving a bribe in the amount of $160,000.
Later, the court found him guilty and sentenced him to 5 years' imprisonment. He was given a lifetime ban from holding positions in the civil service, courts, and local government bodies.