The FBRK editorial team continues to report on the waste business in Astana. Recently, we wrote about the new capital's waste collection operator - Zero Waste LLP, whose garbage trucks were spotted dumping waste in an unauthorised location.
Today, however, we will focus on the recently established company Shalkar Innovations LLP, which, as it turns out, provided Zero Waste LLP with GPS devices for continuous monitoring of municipal vehicles.
Shalkar Innovations LLP was registered in April. Notably, the waste collection operator – Zero Waste LLP – was also created recently: in February, and only obtained a licence for waste collection, sorting, and transportation in June.
Despite its short existence, Shalkar Innovations demonstrates a significant financial turnover – more than 2 million tenge in tax payments this year alone.
According to data from the kompra.kz service, the company is engaged in "software support".
The capital's Department of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources clarified that Shalkar Innovations LLP develops and implements special software for the continuous control of the quality of services for the collection and transportation of solid household waste in Astana.
This means that all movements of garbage trucks must be recorded in the system, including their stopping points for unloading waste.
The first head and one of the founders of the company is Daniyar Baigarayev. He started his professional career in August 2013 at the age of 22 in the Ministry of Industry and New Technologies of the Republic of Kazakhstan.
From August 2014, he worked within the structure of JSC NC Kazakhstan Temir Zholy. In 2016-2018, he held positions in the office of the akim of the capital's Saryarka district: from chief specialist of production departments to head of the transformation department and project office – acting head of the akim's office.
In 2018-2019, he worked in senior positions in subordinate institutions of the Astana akimat, including the akimat-controlled JSC Astana Innovations, which is involved in implementing state policy for industrial and innovative development.
In 2019, Mr Baigarayev became Managing Director for Business and Project Acceleration at the Otandastar Foundation – an organisation with 100% state participation supporting foreign and repatriated ethnic Kazakhs.
In 2020, he was appointed Deputy Head of the Department of Energy and Housing and Communal Services of the Pavlodar region.
The other founders of Shalkar Innovations LLP are the foreign companies Britech Services Ltd and Ecofuture Technology Services L.L.C.
Britech Services Ltd was registered in the United Kingdom but ceased to exist in 2015. Ecofuture Technology Services L.L.C was registered in Dubai. The company specialises in providing IT services, including the repair and maintenance of computer equipment.
Given the experience of the head of Shalkar Innovations in state structures and the involvement of foreign firms in the company, one of which has already closed and another registered in a jurisdiction with low transparency, the question arises: could these facts have influenced the company's acquisition of large contracts?
Particularly alarming is the fact that the GPS tracking system records all stops of garbage trucks, including unloading at unauthorised locations, yet no measures have been taken by the company to prevent violations.
Moreover, even with formal GPS monitoring in place, we observe disregard for environmental regulations – and this is happening in the country's capital.
Meanwhile, city authorities plan to raise tariffs for waste collection, justifying this by increased infrastructure costs. This raises a logical question: what infrastructure can they be talking about if waste is being taken to unauthorised dumps?
Recall that earlier our editorial team sent official requests to the akimat of Astana and the environmental prosecutor's office asking them to verify the fact of waste dumping at an unauthorised location.
To be continued…