The Anti-Corruption Service has identified an unjustified increase in the cost of works during monitoring of the construction and repair of roads in the Kostanay region.
According to the press service of the department, local akimats included unforeseen expenses in the repair estimates amounting to 2% of the project sum, whereas such costs are not provided for by law.
As a result, the cost of road repairs increased by 840 million tenge.
"Furthermore, when drawing up the estimate, the introduced changes regarding the calculation of estimated profit were not taken into account. The old standard of 8% was used (the new one is 5%), which also led to an increase in project costs.", the statement says.
At the same time, Anti-Corruption Service employees found that quality control of work carried out by the contractor was only conducted on certain sections of the roads.
"The akimats themselves chose which roads would undergo laboratory tests. As a result, 20% to 30% of repaired sections were not inspected by the branch of the National Centre for Road Asset Quality each year.", the statement says.
It has become known that in the Mendykara district, tests were only carried out on 3 km of the "Borovskoy-Uzynagash" road, despite its length being 28 km.
Following the monitoring, the akimat of the Kostanay region revised the terms of the contracts and excluded unforeseen expenses. Contracting organisations were obliged to reimburse unjustifiably obtained funds in the amount of 32 million tenge.
Recall that in October, the Anti-Corruption Service identified systemic corruption risks in the sphere of roads. It was noted then that over 2023-2024, state bodies received more than 20,000 complaints from citizens regarding the poor quality of roads. The public links this to corruption.
Since the beginning of 2024, the Anti-Corruption Service has registered 24 criminal cases in this sector. Employees of the department identified that corruption risks are observed at all stages of road construction and repair.