Special Days
Here in Kyrgyzstan we have a number of what are called “Professional Holidays”. These are not holidays as such, but days dedicated to workers in a particular field. They are days when the value of people’s work to society is recognized. Tomorrow, for example – the first Sunday in July, is Medical Workers’ Day. It’s a day when attention is focused on Doctors and Nurses, Orderlies and others who work in this particular field.
There are normally congratulatory messages from the President, Prime Minister and other government officials; special programmes broadcast on television channels; special thematic press releases and conferences about the work these people do; concerts and parties; and all the workers in a hospital, (who aren’t on duty), may gather in a restaurant for a meal. One year, on my way back from Naryn for my regular monthly visit, we stopped in Kochkor en route for lunch and walked into one such celebration and I got inveigled into a dance with one of the doctors. As it happens, I’m up in Naryn again this weekend, so maybe there’s a possibility my return to Bishkek may be delayed by a few hours once again.
Today, the first Saturday in July, is Cooperative’s Day which commemorates the role of Cooperatives in the economic life of the country. Not all of the professional holidays are held on the weekend, however, and some of them have fixed dates, and July 2nd is also Customs Officials’ Day. And, for the record, yesterday, July 1st, was Tax Inspectors’ Day.
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Monday, of course, will be a special for all our American friends – Independence Day. I am not sure how it will be commemorated here in Kyrgyzstan, but I am sure that embassy and air base will be doing something. I have been invited to one restaurant which is offering some special deals.
I sometimes get asked how I, as an Englishman, feel about this day. After all, the thirteen colonies broke away from the British crown. It’s a surprisingly difficult question to answer. The events happened so long ago, and I cannot claim that the English covered themselves with glory in the lead up to, the conduct of, or the period after the Revolutionary War. Having said that, it’s interesting to note that some 15-20% of the colonists remained loyal to the crown, (with a considerable number fighting against the Continental Army), and a large number seem to have stayed neutral, trying to keep out of the conflict. That’s true for the Native American, Indian, community as well.
Unpopularity is one of the problems of being in power. As the Liberal Democrats discovered in Britain, when they went into a coalition government, being in power carries with it responsibility. Sometimes, the decisions they have to take are unpopular, as the Greeks are discovering at the moment.
Having said that, there always seems to be a surplus of people seeking positions of power.
We are hoping, of course, that most of our troubles are behind us; that the Presidential elections, later this year, will signal the start of a more settled period in the country’s history. The preparations are underway, but not necessarily going smoothly. Election day has been slated for Sunday, 30th October. There was some discussion about holding it on 20th November, but there was a slight problem with that. The constitution says that election should be held two months before the end of incumbent President’s term of office.
There were some other problems, in that the law on the election wasn’t adopted until the last moment in the final session. There was also a controversy over the selection of members of the Central Election Committee. Each side, (and it’s not like a coin where there are only two sides as there are many more players in the picture), seems to seek to blame others for the delays that are handicapping the process. However the commission now seems to be in place. To complicate matters further, however, they say that despite the parliament’s adoption of a resolution fixing the election date in it’s last session before the summer recess, they still haven’t received official notification of the date for the election and so cannot proceed with making the necessary preparations.
Roza Otunbaeva has signaled, yet again, that she will not stay in office after the end of the year, despite calls for this to happen. “My intention,” she says, “is to lay the traditions of peaceful and legitimate handover of power.” She even tweeted about it and posted her address to the parliament on Facebook,
At least one of the potential candidates, (it has been suggested that there could be as many as thirty!), had some good news during the week. Kamchibek Tashiev, the leader of the Ata Jurt party, is currently undergoing a criminal investigation following a bout of fisticuffs in the parliament building, but he and his opponent were publically reconciled and there was a call from parliament asking the Prosecutor to drop the investigation.
One commentator has warned that the election may become the battleground in an “information war” being waged, especially in the foreign media, with attacks on candidates seen as being particularly “pro-Western”. The role of the foreign media didn’t exactly escape scrutiny and controversy last year, and it seems that more is presaged, if not expected.
Despite the general success of last year’s referendum and Parliamentary elections, there is no guarantee that all will go smoothly this time.
One interesting piece of news was that a survey suggests that 45% of those questioned felt that the country was developing “in the right direction” whilst 44% felt it was developing “in the wrong direction”. Now, surveys always raise lots of quwstions and should never be taken at face value, but this was slightly better than a similar poll in November 2010 when there were 58% that felt it was progressing in the “wrong direction.”
Those of us that work in Tourism are certainly are certainly hoping that everything will go smoothly. We need some good press in order to attract people back to the Silk Road and the Tien Shan mountains. At the very least, we don’t need any negative press. The fact that the elections will be held so late in the year may be a handicap, however, as most Western tourists may already have made their travel plans for next year.
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The Day of Tourism isn’t until September 27th, but we don’t have to wait until then to get attention. There is a tender going on at the moment to write a concept for a policy for the development of tourism in the country. It’s attracted a number of bids already and the closing date for the tender isn’t until next week.
Mind you, things are happening despite the fact that we don’t have a final document.
As their contribution to the development of tourism, for example, USAID have organized, together with the local authorities and a number of local businesses, a ride around Lake Issyk Kul which is being billed as the “first annual” event. That struck me as a little odd, but is a clear sign that they hope it will become a regular event. Another thing that struck me is that it is not exactly “around” the lake, which would take several days, because after cycling up to 100 kilometers, (there are four different options depending on the participants level of fitness), there will be a ferry ride across the center of the lake followed by a music festival.
USAI have also supported the renovation of one of the boats on Issyk Kul and are looking to reinstate boat trips on the lake; the Japanese are supporting the establishment of a Tourist Information Office in Balykchy, the first town on the lake on the main road from Bishkek., and the Tamchy airport has taken the first of a regular flights from Almaty, so there are signs that things are being done to try and help foster the development of tourism in the region.
The Japanese embassy also organized a round table discussion which, according to the press reports, highlighted the importance of improving the toilet facilities in the country. One expert used the terms critical and urgent in describing the current situation. The meeting also drew attention to the level of service, particularly the need to speak foreign languages and attempting to “understand” the visitor and their needs, from the moment they land in the country, for example, at the airport, until the moment when they leave. This is all very good advice, but there is nothing new in it. Both issues have been repeatedly raised by many people over the past few years.
The Japanese also provided us with one particular piece of good news during the week. Apparently the Japanese Foreign Ministry has apparently changed its travel advice for Japanese citizens thinking about visiting Kyrgyzstan, lowering the danger rating which used to advise against all travel to Southern Kyrgyzstan.
However, it seems a little odd, given that we don’t yet have a firm concept and policy for the development of tourism in the country, that, as part of a restructuring of the government, the Ministry of Economic Regulation, (which currently looks after tourism in the country), is being transformed from a Ministry into a State Committee … and that the Tourism department is being transferred to a newly created Ministry of Culture and Tourism. This move has not escaped criticism but, apparently it is not yet a “done deal” in that, although some parties in the government have approved the new structure, the parliament itself has shelved a final decision until the autumn.
Then there is the question of the visa regime. For many years, those of us working in tourism have been asking the authorities to reconsider the current arrangements and extend the number of countries that enjoy a visa free regime. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs have now published their proposal, that the following 18 countries should enjoy a visa free regime from May until September: Andorra; Vatican City; San Marino; Malta; Monaco; Greece; Ireland; Denmark; Iceland; Sweden; Norway; Portugal; Bulgaria; Croatia; Slovenia; Montenegro; Macedonia and Bosnia & Herzegovina. Although it’s a start, and I am glad to see some of the countries in that list, if the idea is to promote the development of tourism then it seems hard to detect the reasoning behind the suggestion. Oddly enough, Iran has proposed adopting a visa free regime between the two countries. It will be interesting to see how this suggestion will met by the Kyrgyz authorities.
At least one suggestion from the tourism industry has been taken up and we hope will lead to some improvement. Special arrangements are being put in place to help tour groups to pass through customs and immigration at the main border crossing point with Kazakhstan, just north of Bishkek. At the moment, large queues of vehicles and people mean long waits as formalities are completed and if the measures are successfully implemented, these delays should be considerably reduced. This could be important to us when the borders of the Customs Union between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan come into effect.
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Another industry which has attracted a lot of attention during the week is the mining industry. Coal Miners have a professional holiday, (the last Sunday in August), but it seems that those working in the country’s Gold Mines are not so honoured for some reason. That might seem a bit odd as Gold plays such an important role in the Kyrgyz economy – and has the potential to play an even greater role in the future.
It seems that contributions to the state budget in the form of “Bonus” payments, (a one-time payment made by an investor when obtaining the license for the development of a deposit, or in the case of a change of owner), rose from about 50 million som, (about USD1.1 million), last year, to 4.2 million dollars in the first six months of this year. That’s quite an impressive increase – and seems to raise a lot of questions about why there has been such a massive growth.
The Bonus is only type of payment the state receives from mining companies. In addition to the ordinary taxes which all businesses have to pay, they also make contributions to special funds to be used for the development of the local community in the region. I may have got this wrong but, as I understand it, these payments are not currently enshrined in law, like a tax, but negotiated as part of the license agreement. However, that is about to change because there is a new draft law that says these payments should be 2% of the profits they manage to accrue.
The mining companies seem happy to accept this as a contribution to the local communities in which they are based. It hasn’t always, however, won over the local communities. As the director of one gold mining company put it, “they can draw it up as ‘us versus them,’ ‘There’s a bunch of foreigners coming in here to steal our gold’.”
One company may well be ruing a particular decision they took to sack an employee, allegedly for trying to organize a trade union amongst the workforce.
Despite these additional burdens, there still seems to be plenty of interest in developing mineral deposits in the country, and one more, (the Jamgyr deposit), seems to have actually come on stream, which means that there are now three active gold mines in the country.
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Amongst the social issues in the country, Religion seems to be coming to the fore once more, with a prominent theologian arguing that we need a “black list” of sects “which threaten the individual, society and the state.” He quoted statistics which purported to show that 41% of respondents expressed concern at the approach of “non-traditional” Christian groups working with young people in the capital and 53% were dissatisfied with door to door visits by evangelists, (which I thought had been outlawed by a recent change in the law). I was, however, more interested in some of the other results that were claimed for the survey: 61% of respondents were apparently concerned about “the increasing aggressiveness and impatience in society”; 79% do not feel safe in the darkness on the streets of the city; and 72% would welcome the death penalty in relation to “serial killers, rapists, pedophiles and maniacs”. As usual, I found the lack of information about the survey disquieting: How was it conducted?, how was the sample selected?, What questions were asked? And so on.
After all, I saw a survey the other day with the question: “Do you like our site?”. They offered two possible answers: “No” and “Don’t Know”. Somehow I don’t think I would feel too confident about relying on the results of that particular survey.
This strikes me as a suitable topic for the last Sunday in April – Statisticians Day.
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Despite all the social and economic upheaval that we have experienced over the last few years, I often surprise people by saying that I am actually, probably, more worried about other issues – particularly earthquakes and other natural disasters. After all, there is little that we can do to prevent them.
We certainly seem to have had our fair share of earthquakes in recent months but, fortunately, most of them have been small with limited damage and no casualties. There have also been a number of landslides and mudflows.
It’s a bit late, this year, for Earth Day, (April 22nd), but during the week, the Deputy Minister of Energy spoke about the effects of “global warming”, saying that we needed to develop hydropower and alternative energy sources to avoid melting of the glaciers. One book I was reading recently said that it had been estimated that there was enough ice in the country’s glaciers to drown the country under 9 meters of water if they were to melt. Recent studies certainly suggest that they are melting, and shortages are expected sometime staring around 2025. At the moment, however, there is plenty in the massive Toktogul Reservoir, which is almost full to capacity. It’s forecast that the level will peak in late July.
The parliament have also passed a bill on energy efficiency in buildings, laying down regulations for the renovation of buildings, energy certification and the operation of boilers, heating and hot water supply systems.
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This weekend I am off to Naryn once again. Tomorrow is Stay out of the Sun Day. I have absolutely no idea where or how the day originated. One website suggests, tongue in cheek, that it might have been started by vampires in Transylvania, but I don’t give that much credence. It is much more likely that to have been started by some health officials somewhere, sick and fed up with treating cases of heatstroke, and sunburn. It seems to have been around for several years. Well, I am going to be spending something like six hours sitting in the back of a van, so I suppose that I will be doing my bit for the day.
Bishkek