Kazak Builders at Risk From Poor Safety Standards

Marat no longer dreams of making a decent living for his poor family.



After coming to the Kazak capital Astana to find a job, he started working for a company handling a number of large construction projects.



But Marat’s plans ended in catastrophe. After a pile of earth was dropped on top of him by mistake, he was left badly injured, suffering severe trauma to the spinal cord.



One-and-a-half years on, virtually paralysed, the young man lives with his mother in a small wagon on the outskirts of the city.



A commission ruled that his employer was responsible for his injuries, but because he was not covered by an insurance policy, he is not eligible for continuing support and his long-term prospects look dim.



“They helped me get treatment,” Marat said of the building firm. “But my period of treatment as an in-patient in hospital is over and I still need a lot more help.”



“Clinics won’t admit me because I’m not eligible for free treatment, since the injury was inflicted by a private company. And all the money that I and my mother saved has now gone.”



Marat’s story is typical of many construction workers in Kazakstan who are facing a life of disablement with no health insurance to fall back on.



An increase in the number of workers killed or injured on construction sites in Kazakstan is being blamed on companies flouting safety standards in the rush to put up buildings.



Experts say the building boom that has enveloped Kazakstan in recent years has encouraged firms to use unsafe or old equipment and hire people with no skills or experience.



Official figures show that within the last six months, 12 workers died and more than 70 were injured on construction sites in Astana alone. In Kazakstan as a whole, 133 construction workers died and 633 received injuries last year. The dead accounted for nearly a third of the 414 people killed in work-related accidents.



Oleg Sidorov, an Almaty-based commentator, highlights two main reasons for the problem – corruption and a culture of negligence on the part of construction companies.



“It is hard to get permission to use low-quality construction equipment but if you have enough money, you can get all the official stamps and signatures you need to circumvent the law,” he explained.



Sidorov said that in their attempts to cut their wage bills, construction companies routinely hire illegal workers, many of them unskilled labourers from outside Kazakstan. They get paid less than the going rate, and receive no employment benefits or health insurance.



“If they take on a construction worker who has recently come from Tajikistan and who’s never even heard about safety measures, the risks to his life and health increase accordingly,” Sidorov noted.



Murat Shynybaev has been working in the construction industry for many years. As chief engineer at the Arsenal factory, he says he is well aware that the responsibility for the safety of his staff lies squarely on his shoulders.



“Our boys do one of the most dangerous jobs in the construction business, which is erecting steel structures,” Shynbaev said. “We observe all the construction regulations and standards. You can’t take shortcuts with the lives of your workers – they’re not bits of iron you can replace if they break.”



Not everyone is so conscientious. The owner of one small construction company told IWPR it was just too expensive to follow all the safety regulations.



“To observe all the rules, my company would have to pay a pretty penny,” said this businessman, who did not want to be named. “It’s expensive to hire safety experts, and it’s also much cheaper to use construction equipment that has passed its use-by date rather than buy new stuff.”



Alexandr Klimov, head of the industrial safety department for Almaty, Kazakstan’s second city and commercial capital, says that over the last decade, training for builders and engineers has been neglected, and this has led to many avoidable accidents.



“We even see it in our own organisation, so you can guess what the building sites are like,” he said. “We get fine young lads coming to work for us, but they’re not trained workers and they’ve no experience in the industry. But we take them anyway because we can’t get the specialists.”



Klimov said it was not the machinery that was dangerous so much as the human factor – too many workers lacked the skills to operate the equipment.



According to the government department for labour and welfare, everyone who is injured is entitled to compensation. It is also mandatory for workers to be insured against accidents.



Oleg Karabut, head of the department, says construction companies should have no interest in concealing in the workplace accidents, as they are obliged by law to insure all their workers, and the insurance companies will pay for medical treatment.



“Insurance is obligatory and that means when people are incapacitated through injury, they get paid, and if they die, their dependents will be paid,” Karabut said.



But of course this does not apply to the almost countless illegal workers employed on sites throughout Kazakstan. Few of them are aware that their employers are supposed to insure them against accidents.



Some businesses find it works out cheaper just to pay fines for not insuring their workers than to register their staff with insurance companies.



One businessman in the construction industry claimed he was unaware he was required to insure his workers.



“I didn’t know this was mandatory in our country,” he said. “The government should give us more information about it.”



Natalya Napolskaya is an IWPR-trained journalist in Almaty.