KZBlog

Just an update on the tragedy in Almaty oblast where independent of each other, two dams burst at the end of last week.

Global Voices Online cites some good Russian language blogs with details of the evacuation, including a post from Lord Fame on LJ [RUS] who knows the area and posts pictures from the TV news.

The death toll is at 34 at the moment.

In understand that they are asking for donations of food and clothing. If anyone knows exactly how to donate, please comment. I’d be happy to send something and I’m sure other readers would as well.

Shortly after the disasters on Thursday and Friday, the President called for an investigation into the causes of the failures of the privately owned reservoir near Kyzyl-Agash and the public dam in the Karatalsky region of Almaty province. Already five people have been detained including the akim or mayor of the Kyzyl Agash village and the owner of the private dam. The President himself has noted in speeches in recent years that most of the infrastructure of Kazakhstan dates from Soviet times and needs repair or replacement. Whether these failures were preventable by timely repair or whether they were acts of God remains to be seen.

However, as people talk about Kazakhstan being a corrupt country, I wanted to note that if human error is to blame for this disaster, we need to look at corruption as a possible cause. I am not talking about this particular failure because I do not know the officials involved and I have no evidence to accuse them of being corrupt. But speaking in general, when officials use government money for their own gain, it means there is less money to go around. Or when they prioritize projects that involve companies belonging to relatives and friends, or companies that have paid bribes, other projects are deprioritized. Bribery is not a victimless crime. It is plausible that repair of infrastructure near some small villages was delayed or done shoddily because budget money for that repair was funneled elsewhere or the workers were hurrying since they also had to go fix some big man’s house.

Hopefully, the investigation will reveal that everything was aboveboard and this was simply a tragic act of God. But the next time we hear about a company bribing the government, think about which poor village might not get a new dam. Or sewage pipes. Or electricity.