Apr 27 2010

Suggestions For Kazakhstan – Part IX

Category: KazakhstanChrisM @ 5:44 pm

This one is pretty much a personal gripe, and not even totally aimed at the authorities/companies in Kazakhstan this time. As you may know, all of the flats in our area have simultaneously had their hot water and heating turned off before. Before Spring has even arrived! The reason was that other residents weren’t paying their bills on time, and so the company involved had apparently run out of money to pay for the diesel that powers boilers.
Other flats in Astana can apparently have the hot water and/or heating turned off individually, however in this area, the company simply shuts it off for everyone. There are different sides to this situation, as the company will point out that without the money, no one will sell them the diesel (surely non-paying of bills isn’t some sort of new situation for them though, were there no plans in place before?), some flat owners don’t live in the flat and so don’t see why they should pay money to heat a flat not used (again, paying bills for a property you own but don’t live in can’t really be a new concept?), but it boils down to plain injustice.

Why should a family with a small baby have no heating to warm the flat, or hot water to wash their child in, because some property speculator thinks buying a new car is more important than paying their debts? When we moved back to Kazakhstan, we had to get a boiler installed, as they had again cut off everyone, so this year we are at least ready prepared. We just need to remember to test it out properly before…

May the 15th will see the heating turned off (not a problem really, as the flat is already getting a little too warm since Spring arrived) and only cold water available from the pipes. (If it goes orange again, that’ll be a double whammy 🙂 ). If we didn’t have the boiler, that would mean putting kettles on just to ensure Anna didn’t have to go to bed without a wash. OK, I have finished venting for now; if any of this series seems like I’m moaning about trivial things, you may be right (on other posts at least), but I guess I just need to let off steam occasionally. Insert your own bad pun here…

Tags: ,

4 Responses to “Suggestions For Kazakhstan – Part IX”

  1. Alex C says:

    You are quite justified in having a moan about this. You can bet I would be more like screaming in the same situation. But then I suppose we are used to a society where the customer generally has a lot more control over services.
    Just a tad confused on why they turn the hot water off in Spring. I don’t recall having to have a cold shower when I visited back in June 2007. I can understand the heating going off, sort of, though really I would expect each individual flat to have independant control of their own environment.

  2. ChrisM says:

    “The reason was that other residents weren’t paying their bills on time, and so the company involved had apparently run out of money to pay for the diesel that powers boilers.”

    “There are different sides to this situation, as the company will point out that without the money, no one will sell them the diesel”

    “Why should a family with a small baby have no heating to warm the flat, or hot water to wash their child in, because some property speculator thinks buying a new car is more important than paying their debts?”

    They are turning hot water and heating off because the bills aren’t being paid by some flat owners…

  3. IrinaM says:

    Alex, just to make it a little bit clearer the heating is going to be switched off as it is the end of “heating season”, but the water, which should be heated up throughout the year, is not going to be provided because of the debts accumulated, as our boilers (for two blocks of flats) are run on diesel. In truth, it is even more complicated situation and has something to do with a licence that the maintenance company should have to provide such kind of services and be able to collect money (and debts) for it. To be absolutely honest I do not understand it fully either.

  4. Please Pay Your Bills | KZBlog says:

    […] Merriman has another suggestion for Kazakhstan that hits close to home. It’s understandable that the utilities company or the management of […]