Kazak “Free Land” Pledge Not All It Seems

People in Kazakstan are up in arms after a seemingly generous offer from the government of free land for everyone proved less magnanimous than it first appeared.



An August 1 decree said any adult citizen could claim one-tenth of a hectare of land to build a home on. Although it was not completely clear from the wording of the document, the implication suggested that getting a plot was as simple as presenting the appropriate documents at the local authority closest to where you wanted the property.



The result was long queues and even scuffles in Kazakstan’s two largest cities – Astana and Almaty – as both established residents and migrants who had come to the city to work jostled to claim their piece of urban land.



Disillusionment soon set in as applicants were told there was little chance of receiving the land.



“When people arrived to register with state agencies and found they had been deceived, they broke the office windows out of sheer desperation,” said Rozlana Taukina, the head of the Journalists in Danger foundation, who witnessed one such incident.



“The thing is, they had been given a sliver of hope. Then they were told that they’d have to wait for news from higher authorities, but that they would not be getting their 0.1 hectare plots any time soon. That enraged them… and that’s why they smashed windows. Then they went off – having waited hours and hours in the queue.”



Almaty, the financial centre of Kazakstan, and Astana, the capital since 1997, have both enjoyed a building boom in recent years. The state has sold off much of its real estate for commercial use, so land is in short supply in city centres and the growing suburbs.



The mayor’s offices in both cities are trying to dampen public expectations of what they can actually deliver.



“The cabinet decree…. is not applicable in the conditions of our city,” said Kozhakhan Zhabagiev, who heads the land department at the Almaty administration.



Astana governor Umirzak Shukeev said the situation was much the same in the capital. “Everyone thinks we will simply hand out plots of land around Astana, but this cannot be done,” he said.



Shukeev recalled the tense situation that has built up in Almaty suburb of Shanyrak, where an underprivileged local population has in recent months clashed repeatedly with police trying to evict them from what the authorities say are illegal shantytowns.



“Certain limitations need to be applied in order to avoid things getting out of hand,” said Shukeev.



The government order states that local authorities have the right to turn an application down, or to place the applicant on a waiting list if there is no land available.



“In Almaty and Astana, acquiring even one plot of land is today unrealistic. There is simply no land,” Ramazan Sarpekov, a justice ministry official, told the Kazak online newspaper Liter. “When they were drafting the decree, they should have taken account of the realities of large cities which have the highest population density.”



Kazakstan is one of the world’s largest countries, and with just 15 million people there should be enough land to go round. However, high rural unemployment rates mean that more than half the population now lives in or near increasingly crowded urban areas, where employment as well as public services is more readily available.



In the biggest cities, incoming migrants have little chance of buying a home when most long-established residents cannot afford the European-level prices.



“There’s a clash of interests here – a catastrophic shortage of land, and far too many people wanting land in Astana and Almaty,” said Andrei Grishin of the Kazakstan International Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law.



Eduard Poletaev, a political analyst and editor of the Mir Yevrazii (Eurasian World) magazine, told IWPR that the promise of free land was a poorly-thought out attempt by central government to be seen to be helping people, without much though for the real implications.



Poletaev is doubtful that many people will acquire land, even though the authorities will go through the motions. “Applications to receive land will be accepted and registered. And then they will lie for a long time in the official files, thus keeping people’s hopes up so that they can be fed with promises for many more years,” he said.



Many of the commentators interviewed by IWPR suggested the government was engaged in a misplaced attempt to show it was doing something to mitigate land disputes, such as the one in Shanyrak and other outlying suburbs of Almaty.



“I suspect the decree is intended to reduce the tension…and also to abdicate responsibility,” said Grishin. “If there are more incidents like Shanyrak [violence], the authorities can simply say, ‘We’ve given you land, we’ve done what we could. What else do you want from us?’”



Gaziza Baituova is an IWPR correspondent in Taraz.