KAZAKHSTAN

KAZAKHSTAN-IN-BRIEF

CONSTITUTION DAY MARKED IN THE FORMER CAPITAL YESTERDAY.

Correspondents of RFE/RL report that pensioners and elderly people of the former Kazakh capital gathered in the central square of Almaty yesterday, August 30, for their usual monthly action of protest they organize in the end of each month. The day of the action coincided with the Constitution Day of Kazakhstan, and some politicians showed up in the Central Square of Almaty as well. Such leaders of different opposition movements and parties as Madel Ismailov (Workers Movement), Seydakhmet Quttyqadam (Orleu Party), Ghaniy Qasymov (former Chief of the Kazakh Customs Committee, now a candidate to the Kazakh Parliament) and many others were at the square advertising themselves and some of them calling the Almaty citizens not to vote for Otan Party, which is known as a pro-Nazarbayev political party.

Ghaniy Qasymov, who has also unsuccessfully tried himself as a candidate in the Presidential elections held last January, organized a free attendance of amusement park for children in Auezov District of the former Kazakh capital, distributing his pictures and leaflets among the children and their parents.

Elections to the Parliament�s Upper House - Senate, will take place on September 17, to the Lower House - Mazhilis, on October 10 this year.

SOME NEW DETAILS ON THE KAZAKHSTAN�S MILITARY JETS SOLD TO THE NORTH KOREA.

Correspondents of RFE/RL quote NTV television channel as reporting that some new details around the story on Kazakhstan�s MiG-21 military jets sold to the North Korea were revealed this week. Some unknown sources informed independent journalists of Kazakhstan that about 30 MiG-21 military jets had been sold to the North Korea by a private joint venture led by Kazakhstani businessman Alexander Petrenko. No more details are available. The only more detail is about Mr. Petrenko�s former activities on weapons sales. It was reported that he and an American businessman, formerly citizen of Uzbekistan, Oleg Orlov had tried to sell some more weapons of different types to the third countries before.

PS. All the news are based upon reports sent by correspondents of RFE/RL - Sayasat Beyisbay and Toqzhan Sabyrzhan from Almaty.

Aug 31 (Radio �Liberty�)


New festival is to reveal the tourist potential of Kazakhstan

ALMATY, Aug 31

(THE GLOBE)

�To attract attention to such an active rest and tourist business, as �Adventure� (the symbiosis of tourism and sport), which has been wrongly forgotten in our country, in accordance with the decision of the Akim of the Almaty region, on September 16 to 19 the festival-fair �Adventure Asia� will be held in the Almaty nature reserve,� the director of the Scientific-Research Centre of Industry and Tourism announced on Tuesday in Almaty.

Vladimir Voloshin emphasised that the event of this scale would be held in Central Asia for the first time. The similar world�s event are held in Nepal in the national park �Chitvan� and in American parks �Yellow Stone� and �Grand Canyon�.

�It should be mentioned that during the soviet period there was tourism in Kazakhstan, but due to the break of the USSR, and the changed geopolitical situation, the inflow tourism, i.e. tourism oriented to people�s arrival to the country, but not vice versa, fell into decay,� a representative of the Almaty regional Akimat stated.

According to Tugelbai Bekbergenov, the birth of the new festival is to demonstrate the tourist resources, as the festival will help to legalise natural and other objects for both compatriots and foreigners.

Participants of the conference believe that the festival is to become traditional one, as it is planned to held it annually.


Continuation of the theme

What can undermine seismic characteristics of buildings?

Kazbek BAIMYSHEV, the chief of the Technical department Kazakhstan Constructional Committee

ALMATY, Aug 31

(Specially for THE GLOBE)

Recently people began to apply to different instances complaining on reconstruction, which infringed their rights. However, the mass reconstruction of flats and other premises is getting more popular. It is known that fixed assets are the national wealth of any country. One of such wealth and properties of the republican population is the housing fund. However, the process of re-planning of flats is increasing. Besides, flats are withdrawn from the housing fund and reregistered as offices, shops and other objects of a small business. This process is often accompanied not with only worsening exploitation characteristics of adjoining premises, but of the seismic characteristics on the whole. There are some cases, when above living premises (e.g. sleeping rooms), a proprietor of higher premises transforms them into auxiliary premises, fences a balcony part of loggias with capital walls, that threatens to security of lower floors. While reconstructing and transforming ground floors into objects of a small business, sometimes seismic characteristics are reduced. These are breaching new door holes in the carrying partitions of panel buildings, unequal replacement of solid elements of the buildings, etc�

The above-mentioned process is getting more obvious and is based on the President�s Decree �On the development of small business�. However, the Decree does not stipulate any infringement of rights of other citizens in comparison with small businessmen.

Possibly, this situation was caused by the executive power, which, fulfilling the provisions of the Decree, forgets about other decrees and laws, including the Constitutional laws on equality of citizens of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Recently the Kazakhstan Construction Committee took significant steps to work out instructions. The temporary instruction on re-planning and reconstruction of premises has been prepared. This instruction not only simplifies the registration procedures and content of project documents, but also raises requirements regarding feasibility of taken decisions with calculations, as well as forming the database of the completed re-planing of the housing fund with the help of registration cards of the objects. This measure will allow to accumulate materials to monitor the housing fund.

While re-planning a premise, it is necessary to take into consideration that different constructive systems of buildings have different rate of reliability and steadiness, hence, the reconstruction is to be made basing on these data. These measures are not to reduce seismic characteristics of buildings.

Disputable questions raised by citizens regarding the reduced seismic characteristic of buildings may be considered by Kazakh Scientific-Research Institute of Seismology, the head Scientific-Research Institute in the field of seismology. The conclusions of the institute may be a ground for settlement of legal and property disputes between citizens, organisations and managerial bodies. In the second half-of the year the Kazakhstan Construction Committee plans to check re-planed and reconstructed housing areas in seismically dangerous premises.

From the editorial staff:

It is known that we wish to construct a civil society, one of the aspects of which is protection of rights of all citizens. In the developed societies this protection is mainly guaranteed by courts. What is the situation in our country? A famous cinema producer writes in his book �Elevating deception�: �Some temperaments freely treat the law, others � more strictly. The Jewish people respect and praise the law very much. When the Jewish attitude to the law is combines with the Protestant one, as it has happened in America, the preponderance of the law becomes scaring. The advocate became the main figure in the society. In Russia people always treated the law without any respect.�

The situation in Kazakhstan is not better. So, if we want the order be everywhere, we should more often apply to civilised ways to introduce the order, including through the court, as in all developed countries. Including in case of re-planning of a neighbouring flat, that infringes our rights.


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