KZBlog

I have heard from a number of my friends who work in the government-understandably they preferred to remain anonymous–that the government is doing something about government cars being used for personal purposes. However, the program they have put into place doesn’t seem to be optimal.

To the casual observer, this does seem like a really serious problem. You see cars with AV and ADM license plates at the bazaar and at restaurants. A friend of mine says the classmate of his son is picked up from school every day by an ADM car. The kid is six years old.

Why is this personal use of cars a problem, I hear you say? Well, first taxpayer money pays for that gas, those drivers’ salaries and repairs and maintenance on the cars. Government workers don’t have the right to take a taxi and then make me pay the bill, which is essentially what they do when they use government cars for unofficial use. And of course the more a car is used, the more maintenance it needs, and the better chances it will get into an accident. More things I have to pay for so Azamat the Lead Manager can show his girlfriend a good time.

Second, I believe it’s a gateway drug to corruption and abuse of power. If you let a civil servant use one piece of government property anyway he or she pleases, why are they going to draw the line at cars? Why not treat their office, their subordiantes, the computers, and other information and property they have access to as if it was their own? All at our expense. At the very least, it would be very hard to take someone seriously who fights against corruption and then uses their AV to drive their mother shopping at Astrikzhan.

Third,while KZ and AV cars are assigned to individuals, the ADM (formerly AST) cars are in a pool. Civil servants who have the right to use them must phone up the dispatcher and wait for an available car to come pick them up. If all the cars are busy, they have to wait longer. One can imagine situations where people who need a car for legitimate reasons wait while all the cars are busy taking people to night clubs and cafes!

So what is the solution? Lower the mileage limits on use of cars for civil servants? Strictly enforce those limits with surprise inspections? Limit the number of government cars available? Reduce the hours of availability? Not so much. Instead the government appears to have authorized members of Zhas Otan to ride with traffic police at night and stop government cars. Zhas Otan is the youth branch of Nur Otan, the party headed by the President. A number of my friends have reported that their cars were pulled over at night and the driver interrogated by a 20-year old kid as to where he was going and why. Even when the driver had a legitimate reason–going home after dropping a government worker off or picking someone up from a late-night meeting–a complaint was still filed. That complaint apparently requires that the government worker assigned that car write an explanation to the Office of the President because they are the ones who manage the car pool.

I have a few issues with this solution. The main one is that I don’t see why 18 to 30 year old kids need to be deputized. Are the traffic police unable to handle the situation on their own? Or what about the dispatcher, who should know where cars are going and when? Perhaps it would be sufficient for the traffic police to note when they see government cars and check with the dispatcher to see if there was a legitimate reason? While these kids may be nice enough and trying to just help their country, power corrupts and I can’t imagine it’s good for a young person’s upbringing to authorize them to pull over cars assigned to Ministers and Vice Ministers! How will their bosses (or rectors of their universities) deal with them knowing that that night those kids can hunt down their cars and file a complaint to the Office of the President? And it’s a bit strange from my point of view that a political party, rather than a government body, is dealing with this problem. Political parties are not the government. Just because Nur Otan has a majority in Parliament now does not mean that the party itself has power over the government. If anyone should be dealing with this problem, it should be the police or the Office of the President itself (as they own the car pool).

I should say that I don’t know what measures have been taken in tandem with this program. Hopefully there are other measures. I should also note that as far as I understand, the Zhas Otan corps is mainly targeting cars they see stopped outside of cafes, billiards clubs and restaurants late at night–which is fair enough, probable cause and all. However, some cars have been pulled over at 10 o’clock at night, driving. Which leads me to believe that it might be illegal for government workers to use their cars at 10pm. Meaning it’s illegal to make people work at 10pm. Meaning that soon the government will no doubt pass a law forcing all government workers to go home at 7pm, as per their contracts. I see that as happening really soon.