For the general public, the list of jobs in demand [RUS] in Kazakhstan is very useful (Neweurasia.net has published the article translated into English here apparently). Not sure where the site got its research; I wish they were citing their sources–is it official information or is it the results of their surveys?

Anyway, I think we can see why the jobs that are in demand are not being filled by the younger generation. The highest paying jobs on the list are electricians with an average salary of 80,000 tenge ($533) a month and metal workers at 65,000 tenge ($433) a month. Both jobs require technical education which is a time and money cost and both jobs are potentially dangerous. “Experienced specialists in energy” can make up to 80,000 tenge. Don’t be fooled by the abstraction of the formal Russian; they mean people working in the oil fields or power plants–as the chief engineer of Almaty Airport says in a quote on the site: “This sphere lacks enthusiasts ready for intense mental and physical labor, as well as tremendous responsibility” Hard and stressful work and a lot of responsibility and if you live to be very experienced you might make over the national average salary! Can’t think why people don’t want that job! Food process engineers apparently also have a higher than average monthly salary (70,000 tenge) but again it would be tedious work in a factory. Who needs it?

Add to this the fact that in Kazakhstan workers don’t usually receive annual adjustments for inflation or job benefits like healthcare, and that employers frequently pay late or violate safety conditions and it’s understandable why most Kazakhstani dream to work in some office job–where it’s safe and they can make a lot more money. Let’s also note that in Astana, at any rate, you can pay 75,000 tenge just in rent. If you want to eat meat for lunch and dinner every day of the month (as many Kazakhs do), that’s half a kilogram a person a day or 15kg a month–around 10,000 tenge a monthy per person in your house. In other words, these salaries are not only small in comparison to Western countries, they are small in purchasing power. Honestly, I am a pretty frugal shopper and we own our own apartment and I still blow about $1000 a month on food, household goods and the occasional dinner at a restaurant.

What do you think? Are wages just too low in Kazakhstan? Are prices too high? Is there some other way to attract people, especially young people, to the jobs that are in demand?

But more seriously, disabled children are not normally sent to school. In fact I have yet to a see a school equipped for a physically disabled person. Every school has stairs to the front entrance and narrow stairs to each floor. A kid in a wheelchair would be helpless. Teachers are not trained in any way to deal with disabled children or children with learning disabilities. So they are either sent away to special boarding schools or have tutors come to their houses.

But it’s not only school. Soviet standards dictated that houses with five or less floors didn’t need elevators. So many buildings don’t have them. Or if they do, the entrance is up a flight of stairs. So many physically handicapped people can’t even leave their homes. Sidewalks in Almaty even have stairs on them. You may have seen ramps in the sidewalks with little steps in the middle and though those were for a wheelchair. You were wrong; those are for handcarts! Even the Ministry of Social Protection makes people in wheelchairs go in through the garage!

I’ve been talking a lot about people with physical handicaps because those accommodations (elevators, ramps, ground floor entrances) are most noticeably absent. However parents and teachers are not taught coping mechanisms for dealing with physical or mental handicaps. While I’m sure that doctors and social workers try, there isn’t any kind of institutional support for teaching enabling strategies, outside of a few NGOs (I understand there is such an NGO in Almaty that does work with the disabled and their family to work with the handicap and integrate people into society).

What there is, are special companies that employ the handicapped. These companies have special status in winning government contracts. Apparently the sheets on the trains are made by the handicapped as well as some school uniforms! However, these companies tend to be only factories that don’t pay higher wages or give any better benefits to their workers. So basically the only jobs open to the handicapped are minimum wage, industrial work at a factory machine!

Unfortunately, the usual pattern appears to be that if a family gives birth to a disabled child or someone in the family is injured seriously in an accident, Mom or Dad will have to quit their job to stay home and be a caretaker. They receive an inadequately small allowance from the government. But invalids are left at home, badly educated and lacking job skills. Or the opportunity to physically go to a job. In fact, after the age of eighteen, disabled people can be sent to state nursing homes! So a family that can’t or doesn’t want to take care of their disabled son or daughter can send him or her to live with abandoned pensioners from the age of 18!

The picture seems pretty bleak and I would love to hear in the comments that I am wrong and that there are stories of hope for the handicapped.

I have a few questions here. First of all, I had always thought that hijab meant headscarf. In that regard, many women in Kazakshtan wear scarves on their head and it isn’t clear to me how one would distinguish those wearing it for religious purposes and those wearing it because their heads are cold. In other words, it isn’t clear to me that a headscarf really does indicate one is a Muslim. Many Russian grandmothers wear scarves on their heads–hence the odd porting of the word babushka in America to refer to a head scarf itself.

Complicating this is the fact that a quick websearch indicated that hijab can also refer to a headscarf and veil or it can refer generally to proper Muslim dress. In the latter sense, men wear a hijab when they grow their beards and hair and hijab for women includes long sleeves and long skirts.

If we are talking about a veil, I can see the position of the education officials. A veil does clearly mark one as Muslim, which I don’t necessarily agree is bad (I’ll get to that later). However, a veil arguably does promote a belief system that women are inferior to men, that they should not be seen, and also a view that men cannot control their sexual thoughts when women are exposed to them and therefore women should cover themselves to protect men from sin. Not sure children should be exposed to the idea that 1) women cause men to sin and 2) therefore women should be held responsible for men’s sins.

If we are talking about long sleeves and skirts, or other modest dress, I don’t see the problem because again this is not something that only Muslims prescribe to. Every day I wear a collared shirt with long sleeves and long pants to my job at a school, the same dress I would wear to a mosque out of respect to Islam. Does that mean I am “stressing my belonging to a certain religion”? I don’t think so.

Which brings us to the fundamental issue here: Why is demonstrating that you have a religion banned in schools? Does this mean Christians cannot wear crosses? Can Jews doodle a Star of David in class? Can Muslims wear a crescent moon necklace or a medallion of Arabic script? I understand that the motivation is likely promoting religious tolerance and avoiding extremism. I believe that any sign that one is intolerant of religion should be banned–for example a T-shirt that says, “The Jews killed Christ” or, “Islam is the only true religion”. But we’re not talking about offensive messages here. We’re talking about, I believe, a girl who wants to wear a headscarf because she believes her hair should not be seen in public. I don’t agree that women should be forced to cover their heads, but I don’t see why it’s a problem if they chose to do so.

So any thoughts from you, my gentle readers?

One tradition that I gather is a carry-over from Soviet times is the Subbotnik where people volunteer their time on Saturdays to do community service. In principle it’s a nice idea. Residents of an apartment complex go collect trash or repaint playground equipment or weed the lawns and sidewalks. Organizations like political parties or unions also make a big showing by sending members out to clean up leaves or what not.

However, more problematically, schools send kids out to sweep the yards, plant flowers, and even do more technical work like repainting. The times I have witnessed this the whole thing was over seen by teachers, some of whom treat the kids like laborers, yelling at them, ordering them around, telling them to work harder. I was also shocked to visit a school in Astana recently and see a calendar of summer events. Amid Kazakh language camp ad an Archeological Field Trip (which sounds neat–can I go?) was Repair Week with junior high school students assigned to do repairs at school. And Cleaning Week, where students will clean the entire school. During summer break! It is specially disturbing when kids are used to do work that should be done by hired staff, or work that requires training to be done correctly. In other words free child labor is exploited to save costs. Furthermore repair work could be dangerous for children.

In fact compared to Western schools, schools here demand quite a bit of labor from their students. Students are usually responsible for ringing the bell, going from class to class to register absences, collecting money for special events or birthday presents, even unlocking and locking classroom doors. It seems odd that a school would distract its students from becoming educated by giving them so many extra duties. In fact every day, two or three students are “on duty” and skip classes to do menial work that could easily be done by teachers or administrators. I hope that this trend of treating students as servants will be phased out.

In terms of what we traditionally see as child labor, it is certainly not uncommon to see children working at the bazaar, or small stores. There is a fruit stand near my house where a 12-13 year old boy always serves us while his mother looks on and cares for a small baby. I asked once why the boy was working. This family lives in a village near Astana. The father works in Astana so everyday he brings his family to the city and sets up the stand. Then he goes to work. An older brother spends the day securing shipments, buying from village farmers, driving goods to the stand, and any other odd jobs that need to be done. Mom has no one to leave the baby with, so she comes to oversee things but mostly has to care for the infant. Leaving the kid to work the stand. Of course he goes to school during the school year, but fruit stands only work in the summer anyway. It’s hard not to be a bit sympathetic toward this family, who claim that Father’s wage simply isn’t enough to support them and the stand is not profitable enough to make a profit. This sort of story is common throughout the world of course.

But other examples are a little more problematic. For example, a kid helping his older brother who runs a delivery service. I watched the other day as the big brother drove the truck to a store nearby and then send his little brother out to haul boxes, while he “guarded the truck” i.e. listened to the radio and smoked. I’d guess the kid was 10-12 years old! Or the child conductor on the bus a few months ago. Mommy (I assume) wearing the proper conductor uniform sat in the front and chatted with the driver, while her son ran around collecting money and giving out tickets. Truly disgusting.

Does anyone else have anecdotes of child labor? What can we do about it? Or is it not a serious problem? Maybe children should be put to work, especially if the family needs the extra labor? What do you think?

“Discrimination against Kazakh citizens can be observed both at the stage of signing individual labour contracts and during the entire employment process – while exercising the right to safe working conditions, the right to conclude a collective agreement freely, as well as the rights for rest and payment,” Kushkaliyev said.

In all, 127 warrants have been issued by the Prosecutor General and initiated 245 cases. Investigations have been carried out since the beginning of this year. So far 22 licenses have suspended and 5 revoked from foreign companies.

For example, Dongil High Vill Co., a Korean construction company which is building an elite housing complex in Astana, is paying local accountants over $5000 less than foreign colleagues, according to the Prosecutor General. It is true that foreign employees often receive equivalent to levels of their home country. They also often get a stipend for rent and another one to travel home and bring possessions over. However, a $5000 difference is pretty extreme. That more than covers rent of a super-elite apartment and two or three flights home to Korea.

Gazeta.kz also reports that ArcelorMittal Temirtau is ordered to decease age discrimination in hiring people. Apparently, the Human Resources Director of the company said that the company only hires women under 40 years of age and men under 45 years in a media source. Age discrimination is illegal in Kazakhstan, although it is not uncommon for employees to specify age-requirements in job advertisements or for job-wanted classifieds to include personal information like age.

Of course, ArcelorMittal is also under investigation for possibly violating safety regulations after two explosions in two years at their mine in Temirtau. Whether the age-discrimination charge is serious enough for the Prosecutor to follow up on it alone, or whether it is being used to bring pressure on an already besieged company, is unknown. But considering the tragic loss of so many Kazakhstan miners, I have no problem with the government being a bit heavy-handed if there is evidence of violations.

The executive director of the board of B.N.N. Pegasus apparently thinks the group were terrorists, but it is not the first time there has been violence between Turkish workers and citizens of Kazakhstan. In October of 2006, there was a major brawl in Atyrau between Turkish and Kazakh workers. There have been any number of similar clashes and commentary on Internet bulletin boards and news sites seems to indicate tension between natives of Kazakhstan and Turkish workers working in this country. Some Kazakhstany have complained that Turks take jobs that could have gone to Kazakhs, receive preferential treatment from Turkish supervisors, and treat Kazakhs as second-class citizens. On the other hand, some Turks seem to feel that Kazakhs are not grateful that many Turkish companies work in Kazakhstan and boost the economy.

As construction is almost frozen in the country due to lack of credit and striking workers, any social tension might well be multiplied. In any case, it is a horrible tragedy that workers were attacked and hopefully it was an isolated incident.

We asked about this and the salon workers told us that the akimat dreamed this up. The salon claims that staff of the akimat came to every salon in Astana and told them participate in the program or they could be shut down or audited for taxes.

Obviously this led to some ill will on the part of the salons. They said the program was incredibly stupid because if they are forced to give free or cheap haircuts, they aren’t going to take the time to do a great job. Further, they claim that almost no one showed up for the free haircut, and people are showing up outside the designated hours and demanding their free haircuts, threatening to complain to the akimat, etc. etc. They also say that some percentage of their clientele are pensioners or veterans who have the cash for a good haircut, manicure, pedicure, etc, and these people will now come when it’s free. Finally, the fact is that there are salons whose business is serving older people, with low-priced decent haircuts, and these places will likely go out of business.

Overall, if everything we were told is true (and I have no way of verifying this), it seems like a step backwards. Instead of giving pensioners more money, they give them free, low-quality services. Instead of trying to generate voluntary, good-will inspired altruism and community, they force businesses to participate in programs that will hurt them. One can’t help but wonder if pensioners really need haircuts and a savings of a whole 300-800 tenge a month! Did someone in the akimat see a group of old people with bad hairstyles and think, “How inappropriate for our beautiful new capital that there should be ugly people in it?” Or perhaps someone’s grandfather is a veteran with fast-growing hair?

My recent post on competitiveness and the consumer economy got a few requests to expand on the cable company. To me, this is a scene that could simply never happen in the US. I don’t want to engage in amateur anthropology and analyze what it is about Kazakhstan that makes this sort of thing acceptable, but I assure you this is the zenith of a series of such experiences, as we have worked to furnish our humble apartment.

Up until the point where the workers were to arrive, everything was more or less normal. It would have been nice had there been a place to see the list of channels we would get, instead of having to ask over the phone—“Do we get CNN?” Or if we didn’t have to travel to the office to sign a contract on the workers coming. As opposed to later when we would have to go and sign a contract on the actual cable service.

We are told the cable guys will be there on Saturday from 10am – 1pm. At noon on Saturday, we call to ask if the guys are still coming, if they know when they will come so we aren’t stuck at home the whole time. Ah, says the cable company, the workers will be there at 1:30. 1:30 comes and goes. 2pm they show up.

They are 1) drunk, 2) standing in the middle of the stairwell, a good five feet from our door, 3) they have their hands on their hips.

We ask, “Why didn’t you come earlier?”
“What? What do you mean earlier? We can leave if we want to!”
“We were told you’d be here from 10am – 1pm.”
“Where on the contract does it say anything about time? Nowhere. If you don’t want us to be here, we’ll just leave. We work from 10am to 1pm!”
“It’s two! It’s fine, come in, get to work”
“So what? We can come at 3 if we want to.”
“Ok, ok, just come in, come in”
“We can leave, we don’t have to be here. Look here on the contract, the time is left blank. You have no grounds for complaint.”
“Look, we’ve been waiting all day for you to come, just come in and work.”
“No, we’re leaving, come on guys.”

And they leave.

My theory: they were at a café drinking with their buddies when they realized they had to work today, so they decided to be ornery and get out of it so they could keep drinking. This level of discourse isn’t usual. But I have noted, and many others besides, that in Kazakhstan, people are much more direct, brusque, upfront than in the West and it can be quite intimidating and give the impression that Kazakhs are rude, self-centered, even miserable.

Now the upside of this level of directness is that it works both ways. In America, one generally has to hide one’s irritation and qualify, try to give the other person’s point of view equal weight, point out your own flaws. Here one can be much more direct and aggressive: “Why didn’t you get your work done?” as opposed to, ‘Now, I know you had a lot of work this week, and maybe I didn’t go a great job supervising you, in fact you probably have other duties I don’t know about, and I don’t want to establish one of those boss-worker relationships with you, so I hate doing this, but I wanted you to know I had the expectation that this work would be done by now.”