In June of this year, the official information resource of the Prime Minister of Kazakhstan published that the government had allocated 3.1 billion tenge from reserve funds for the reconstruction of the Nura group water pipeline.
It was reported that the wear and tear of the main network, which was commissioned back in 1967, reaches up to 90%. And now, finally, the government has decided to undertake the comprehensive modernisation of the water management infrastructure.
The editorial board of FBRK has obtained information that in 2021, reconstruction of 16 km of the water pipeline was already carried out in the Korgalzhyn district, costing the state approximately 500 million tenge.
We sent an official request to the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation to find out more details about the ongoing reconstruction.
The ministry responded that a partial reconstruction of the water pipeline had indeed been carried out several years earlier.
According to the ministry's response, sections of the group water pipeline in the Korgalzhyn and Egindikol districts were in a state of disrepair, which led to interruptions in the supply of drinking water to the local population.
For this reason, in 2020-2021, repair work was carried out on the emergency section of the pipeline at a total cost of 503.2 million tenge.
As the ministry's response indicates, two construction projects have now been developed: for the reconstruction of the main part of the pipeline and the headworks.
For these purposes, on 24 June 2024, 3.17 billion tenge was allocated from the government's reserve funds.
The ministry emphasised that due to the critical water supply situation in the Egindikol and Korgalzhyn districts, urgent measures are required to replace the water mains and reconstruct equipment at the source.
It turns out that the water supply situation in these districts has not changed, despite the repair work already carried out there in 2020-2021. But why?
One can assume that the work was carried out poorly, and therefore it took only a few years for the pipeline to once again become unusable.
Perhaps the repair work in 2020-2021 was only carried out on paper. In that case, it is very convenient to have decided to undertake a full reconstruction of the pipeline, after which it will likely be extremely difficult to determine how well the work was done a few years ago.
There could be many versions of events, and therefore our editorial team has tried to find out what actually happened during the reconstruction of the section of the Nura group water pipeline in 2020-2021.
According to data from internal sources, construction and installation work on the pipeline sections in the Egindikol and Korgalzhyn districts began in June 2020 and was completed in November 2021.
The general contractor for the project, whose author is RSE "Kazvodkhoz", was LLP "Astana – Tekhnadzor".
Interestingly, according to the ministry's data, the total cost of the project was 503.2 million tenge, whereas in the documents we found, this amount constantly varies.
For example, in the construction quality report dated 10 December 2021, an estimate is presented confirming the total project cost at over 579 million tenge, of which about 480 million tenge is the cost of work, 4.2 million is the cost of equipment and over 95 million tenge is 'other'.
According to the facility commissioning certificate dated 20 December 2021, the total estimated cost of the project was over 579 million tenge, while the actual cost was over 503 million tenge.
According to the minutes of the Water Resources Committee meeting on 12 July 2021, the technical council decided to make changes to the main contract and lengthen the section of the main water pipeline where repair work would be carried out.
From these same minutes, it appears that the amount of the main contract dated 26 May 2020 was about 488 million tenge "including a discount". The remaining funds amounted to about 178 million tenge, which turned out to be just enough to lengthen the repair section.
Meanwhile, according to data from internal sources, the extension of the section in fact never happened.
Furthermore, the minutes state that LLP "Astana – Tekhnadzor" completed the repair work on the section but did not dismantle the old pipes, which the project did not actually provide for anyway.
The new pipeline was installed parallel to the old one, which continues to be operated.
The meeting announced that additional work on tie-ins was needed to ensure parallel operation of both lines.
According to our information, the relevant work was never carried out, so it is quite possible that only the old line is in operation today.
But this is not the most interesting part.
The editorial board of FBRK has obtained an appeal from the general director of the enterprise "Nura Group Water Pipeline", Gamzat Sagandikov, addressed to the head of "Kazvodkhoz", Altay Yelzhasov.
In his appeal, Mr Sagandikov reports that the facility was commissioned in 2021.
However, when submitting the documentation to state control bodies, it turned out that the participants in the reconstruction had improperly drawn up the documents.
Specifically, it concerned the changes agreed upon during the technical meeting, which the project author – "Kazvodkhoz" – was supposed to incorporate into the documentation, but according to Mr Sagandikov's appeal, this was never done.
In Mr Yelzhasov's response dated 5 September 2022, it is stated that "Kazvodkhoz" fulfilled all its obligations under the project, and that it is the customer's responsibility to notify state control bodies of the start, suspension, and resumption of work.
Be that as it may, the repair of the emergency section is now set to be carried out as part of the new reconstruction. The question is, how many more reconstructions will be needed for the residents of the Egindikol and Korgalzhyn districts to finally have a permanent supply of drinking water.