Aigul MYRZATAI
ALMATY, Sept 15
(Specially for THE GLOBE)
Her name is simple � Antipa. She is a businesswoman. Looking at this pleasant woman, you cannot say that she is a businessman. She is strict, but tactful. And her smile is open. Her life is not full with events of the �Hollywood� scale. Her fate is like many Kazakhstan women�s fate. She graduated from the Polytechnic Institute. Then she worked at the aviation technical school, then as a senior teacher at the Polytechnic Institute in Tashkent. She has three beautiful daughters and a husband. Once, on a �fine� winter day in 1990 she found out that she had no food in her house. She had no money to buy bread. She did not care of herself, but what about her daughters? She went in for business. Antipa became an intermediate dealing with the export of cotton waste products. She was working for 5 years and earned US$ 180 thousand. When this amount was discussed at the family meeting, both her husband and brother proposed to save money in one of the Swiss banks. They could have live well on interests from this money having no troubles. But the woman�s nature is different. Antipa invested money to the Saryagach knitted-goods factory, which by that time was the shelter for homeless dogs, cats and rats. By the middle of 1995 Antipa opened the first sewing shop to produce blankets made of camel�s wool. Then three more shops were opened. Antipa�s husband did not want to help her. He muttered: �Why are you doing this? You will not work for yourself, but for the state. Moreover, you will be deceived.� Alas, he was right.
When Kazakhstan pilots saw the quality of Antipa�s goods, they offered the director of the factory to conclude a contract with them. Antipa agreed. In October 1998 she signed a contract on supply of 100% wool sweaters with them. The value of the contract was 995 thousand tenge. She has honestly fulfilled the order. But what about the pilots? From that time Antipa�s business has been decaying.
- Antipa, did you concluded any contracts after the contract with the pilots?
-Yes. In July 1998 we won the tender on sewing greatcoats and stripped vests for the Defence Ministry. The value of the tender was 5 million tenge. In August 1998 we won another tender for the amount of 11 million 700 thousand tenge. Before that, in April I concluded a contract with the Customs. The former chairman of the Customs Gani, who strove for the President�s post, asked me orally to sew cloth coats for his officers for 1 million tenge. I signed the contract with �Kedentransservice�, a self-financing structure, which had been established specially for the Customs. The contract was signed by me and the general director of the state republican enterprise �Kedentransservice� Abilgaliev.
- Did they pay the total amount?
- I may say �no�. Pilots have not paid a tyin. The Defence Ministry still is to pay 580 thousand tenge (out of the total amount of 5 million tenge). Frontier department paid only 1 million 200 thousand tenge of the total amount of 11 million 700 thousand tenge. �Kedentransservice� was restructured.
- Did you apply to anybody?
- Of course. When Gani Kasymov was dismissed, Nukenov was appointed to his post. But Nukenov is not authorised to settle financial problems. The Customs committee is subordinate to the Ministry of State Revenues. The chairman of the State Revenues Commission is Kakimzhanov. Kakimzhanov received visitors on July 27, 1999. I specially came to Astana to come to the minister. There were no emotions. He did not read my letter. I brought all documents. I tried to explain. Do you know, what Kakimzhanov told me? �I advise you to work for NATO, as you sew so cheap coats.� I replied: �What are you talking about?! Even if we presented them our products, they would not take, as they protect their producers. Europe works for NATO.� He said: �Then close the factory.�
- To whom else did you appeal?
- I came to the hotel and cried. Then I went to Smakova, the Ministry on Women and Children�s problem. She promised to help me. Yesterday at the exhibition the Minister came to my stand and asked: �Antipa, how are you?� �Our wings were burnt. We are not flying, but creeping.� �I cannot help you. I have appealed to him. This is a financial issue,� the Minister said. Of course, I understand her, she does not want to spoil her relations with ministers.
- Have you come to conclusion, that you should have obeyed your husband?
- Yes. If they do not pay their debts under the contracts, I will be a bankrupt. Moreover, my personnel will lose their jobs, and we will be debtors before the state.
- You are nominating yourself to the regional Maslikhat. Why do you do this?
- Now I carefully watch all Kakimzhanov�s speeches. They are lobbying only their own interests. I have understood this. I am not blind. But not everybody understands this. If some people know this, what can they do? I said to Kakimzhanov the following: �What are you approving? This law is profitable only for big exporters.� He replied: Yes, I know.� That�s all.
Recently a lot of poor people appeared in our city. Some of them do not look as �tramps�, but look like presentable people. Many of them do not beg, but collect empty bottles.
We occasionally met one of these people near the National Bank building. It was a hot day, and authors of this article decided to drink a bottle of lemonade. Then our hero came. He asked for a permission to sit with us to wait for empty bottles. So, our talk started. Out interlocutor was a former engineer of the city �Santechmotazh� department. By the way, he is a native Almaty citizen of the third generation.
Valery began to work when he was 17. His total length of service is 35 years. When he was working at the above-mentioned department he had an industrial injury. In 1994 while examining one of the constructional objects, he fell from the third floor, as scaffolds were broken. In the result Valery had a serious cranial-brain trauma. Having spent about three years in different hospitals, he became the 2nd group invalid and a corresponding note was put in his labour book.
At the present time his invalid pension is 1920 tenge. In five years he may receive a pension on age. Trying to find a job of a guard (as he could not get any other job, even as a dvornik � people who sweep the pavements), Valery visited most of state institutions. However, he was rejected everywhere. Then he applied to the labour exchange. But he was told he had to pay 300 tenge for their services.
�Where could I take this amount, when I receive this pension? And I have to pay monthly for public utilities almost 2000 tenge,� asks the former engineer with a high education.
He lives alone in a one-room flat. Recently he buried his wife. His daughter was divorced. She has two children and cannot help him, as she can hardly make both ends meet.
�I can nothing but collect bottles to buy bread. My nephew helps me. When I have to eat at all, I come to her. I know she will feed me,� while saying this, the tanned face of the collector of bottles became even darker.
The only objective of Valery is to survive to his pension on age, which was delayed by the authorities to 63 years. Then his pension is supposed to be a little higher, than the present one. The former engineer has no other hopes.
�Before I believed our government. But now I do not trust anybody, and I will not go to the election,� after these words he said goodbye, having put our empty bottles in his bag. He went to continue his �work�, disappearing towards luxury foreign cars standing nearby.
It is striking that we met him near the National Bank, the heads of which had devaluated tenge according to the government�s instruction. Thus, they �devaluated� more lives of such people as our interlocutor. The recent abandonment of the privileges also negatively influenced standard of life of pensioners, invalids and other people of scanty means. And there are more than one million of these people in the republic. Many of them have to survive.
Askar DARIMBET,
Michail SERGEEV
All Over the Globe is published by IPA House.
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