KZBlog

As I’ve mentioned before, I get a fair number of emails from people asking me what it’s like to live here. People get job offers here or are coming to adopt a child and they want to know what to expect. Some of them have very low expectations or have concerns that would be more appropriate if they were moving to Zambia or Myanmar: Do the shops carry enough food or are there shortages? Do the police harass foreigners?

I always reassure people that there are no deprivations in Astana or Almaty (or I would imagine, Aktau or Atyrau). You can get your soy sauce and your peanut butter and your Pampers and your flat screen TVs and your five-star European restaurants. The police do not harass foreigners or ask for ID from people on the street most of the time. It’s pretty civilized here overall.

But there is one area that really gets on my nerves. Last night, I came home to find a notice on my doorway:

Astana Teplotransit is shutting off the hot water supply as of the 30th of August because of the large number of people who owe money. The total debt for apartment services comes to 3 million tenge. Please pay your bills immediately to avoid an interruption of your hot water.

I checked; this note was plastered on every entrance to my building. There are 12 entrances and 9 stories per entrance and 3 apartments per story. That means they are shutting off service to 324 apartments because some fraction haven’t paid. To me that is extremely cruel, particularly without warning.

Of course, as you may have guessed, when I went up to my apartment to take a quick shower, the hot water had already been turned off! So much for waiting for the 30th. What is worse, they posted this note on Friday. Today, Saturday, is a holiday for Constitution Day. Sunday no one works and Monday is a day off for Constitution Day and the first day of school! That means even if everyone came home and immediately ran to the water company office or the bank to pay, there would be no one working–after all in Astana we work until 7 or 8 at night. It would also be impossible to get those payments processed before Tuesday because of the holiday weekend. So they have set up a situation that ensures they get no money for four days. It’s as if the system was designed to punish people, not to actually get debts paid back.

Let’s not forget that I, who have no debt, am suffering because of the actions of some of my 324 neighbors. I barely know all the people in my stairwell. How am I supposed to influence my neighbors to pay? How does making me suffer help? Particularly since this building is not fully occupied; not every apartment has been sold and a lot of people buy apartments in this area just to sell them later because this region is semi-prestigious. A good percentage of these apartments lie unoccupied and the owner will never see this announcement.

Why would it have been a problem to send someone around a few days ago to collect payments? Or call the debtors and tell them to pay?

Now, you may think I am overreacting to an isolated incident, but let’s not forget that “heating season” is coming soon. On October 15th they will start pumping hot water into all the radiators on the central system. And that hot water comes from the same source as our tap water. Usually it takes them half the month of September to clear the heating pipes of air, get the machinery in shape and make preparations. And that means, you guessed it, they shut off the hot water for a good two weeks.

Beyond the lack of hot water, which is unacceptable in and of itself, it’s the methods that are used to make people pay. I’m all for harsh measures, but they should be carried out in a logical way that makes it possible for people to pay and that actually encourages them to do so. In fact, they have provided a disincentive to pay. I feel really stupid for paying. All that money I wasted giving to the company, and still no hot water. Maybe next month I’ll stop paying too.