Having fun … at work
The end of January is generally thought of as depressing time of the year, especially in the Northern hemisphere which is, normally, firmly in the grips of winter. The excesses of the Christmas and New Year celebrations are over and done with and everyone has buckled back down to work and the summer holidays are still a long way off.
In the summer hemisphere it must be different as they are still firmly in the grips of summer, but that also brings trials and tribulations. I understand from Tony, for example, that Brisbane is bracing itself for another bout of flooding, but at least it isn’t expected to be as severe as last years.
That’s said to be the reason that Blue Monday was invented as a marketing ploy. Blue Monday?: either the third Monday in January or the Monday of the last full week in January. That may well have been a somewhat cynical marketing ploy, but today is supposed to be another specially designated day to help lift our spirits: Fun at work Day.
Unless you are very lucky, the workplace is not, usually, a fun place; rather one which can be full of stress with deadlines to meet and all sorts of pressures upon us giving little time or opportunity to relax and simply enjoy what we do. That’s a pity because, or so it is said, if you enjoy your work then you’ll work better: production increases; there is better customer satisfaction; it’s good for staff morale, relations and health. I remember how, back when I was schoolteacher, we would organize all sorts of activities to help create a happy atmosphere and teamwork: A colour day, when everyone would wear something of a particular colour; who’s got the most outlandish tie competition; and that sort of thing.
Actually, Fun at Work Day is a bit hard to pin down. Various sources say that it I January 25th, (Tatiana Day and Burns Night), 28th and 29th … and some even say that it is on April 1st, the same day as April Fools’ Day. In the absence of a general consensus, there is also a suggestion that we celebrate them all. That seems like a good idea this year, when today, (which seems to be the most likely candidate judging by the references I have managed to track down), falls on a Saturday and, at least here in Kyrgyzstan, many people aren’t at work because they work a five day week.
Because of the extended New Year holidays, however, the extra non-working days which were granted in a Government decree were replaced by Government Decree with working Saturdays … and this happens to one of them. So was last Saturday and members of the cabinet, led by Prime Minister Omurbek Babanov, may have decided to commemorate Fun at Word Day a little early because they paid a visit the cinema … en bloc. They went to see a film called Almaz – Diamond – which told the story of a family from a remote village who move remove from a remote village to the capital and the hardships that they encountered. It’s a good film with English subtitles and you can see it on-line here. One of the justifications given for the outing was to try and ensure that members of the government didn’t lose contact with the ordinary people, but one of the results was a certain amount of criticism for taking the afternoon off, especially as most other workers couldn’t.
That doesn’t mean that the government hasn’t been working. I certainly haven’t seen any decline in the number of announcements and press releases. Perhaps most notable was the 100 day Action Programme announced by Djoormat Otorbaev, the Vice Prime Minister responsible for the development of the economy. I hope that he enjoys his work, he certainly has a difficult task and I am not sure how much scope there is for him to have Fun at Work. At least there seems to be some interest from Foreign Investors about potential opportunities and projects in the country from as places as diverse as Pakistan and Germany.
Anyway, the programme identified some fifteen areas where the government intends to implement improvements and I loved the last, number fifteen, the catchall: “Other actions”.
One of the things that Otorbaev did during the week was to make a very interesting statement which made me want to sit up and cheer. “The government shouldn’t have a stale in enterprises,” adding, “In those areas where the state is engaged in economic activities, corruption, theft, inefficiency, nepotism, bribery and all the possible vices occur.” Basically his argument was let business get on with its work, making money, creating jobs and paying taxes and let the government get on with its job. The government shouldn’t be earning money, it should regulate and deliver services to the population.
He also “blasted” those responsible for delaying implementation of a collectively agreed government policy decision taken last year to implement a visa free regime for citizens of over forty countries. I’m not sure if this will have any effect on things but at least something is happening. As an aside: the visa free regime with Turkey announced last year finally comes into effect in February.
Help is also being planned for entrepreneurs to cope with the entry of Kyrgyzstan into the Customs Union. That includes the abolition of several measures including many licenses and inspections which may not be actually essential. I am not sure how much this will help, however, as this year those of us in tourism are facing one particular problem involving an increase in bureaucratic procedures which are a direct result of replacing one system with another in order to supposedly simplify the situation. Getting permits to take tourists into the border zones used to be a chore, now it is a nightmare … and some of us don’t understand the logic or reasoning behind the permits anyway.
One person who is probably not having much Fun at Work at the moment is the Minister of the Interior. Although the Finance Ministry has said that it will try to find funds to pay salary increases, the government approved only something like a third of their requested budget, (2.5 billion som as opposed to the 7.5 billion that they asked for). Quite how he will make up the shortfall is not clear … although they have announced cuts in the budget of almost 400 million som, it won’t be enough. I haven’t seen the details but can’t help wondering if this is reduction is an simply an example of virement – funds being transferred from budget account heading to another – or if it is a real retrenchment and, if so, how it will affect delivery of services.
One place where you might expect the employees to enjoy themselves and have fun at work is in a nightclub. That wasn’t the case earlier in the week, however, when a fire broke out in the early hours of the morning. Depending on who you believe, (and there’s probably an element of truth on both sides – even though they appear to be quite contradictory), the fire brigade either arrived within minutes or took an inordinately long time to turn up, (an hour and 47 minutes), which meant that the staff had to fight the fire themselves having evacuated the revellers. Fortunately, no-one was hurt and the cause of the fire is under investigation but it doesn’t look as if it was anything nefarious.
Anyone going out for the night might want to talk a torch, (flashlight), with them as the power company have announced that they are going to turn off the street lights early in all but the main city center streets in an attempt to help save electricity. I haven’t really been out late at night so I can’t comment on the effects of the measure but I did notice a tweet from an ex-pat who said that the lights outside her apartment were burning as bright as ever.
Talking of Twitter, there has been some controversy brewing in the social media over an announcement from the company that they may start to “block” tweets from certain countries as a result of the use of the service by protesters around the world to organize themselves.
Another issue which continues to dominate the bloggersphere and social media seems to be the deputies vehicles. The allocation and use, (or misuse?) of official cars caused a considerable rumpus last year and was one of the (minor) issues that helped to focus attention which brought down the previous Toroga, (Speaker of the Parliament). This time attention is focused on their own private cars, Lexuses, (or should that be Lexi?), and the like; especially the costs involved. Comparisons were drawn as to how someone would have to work in order to purchase such vehicles, both the average citizen and the deputy himself on his official salary. “MPs Told to Ride the Bus” ran one headline, and a photo montage appeared on the internet showing Boris Johnson (Mayor of London) cycling to work, Michael Bloomberg, (Mayor of New York), riding the subway to work and a motorcade raking Bishkek’s top politicians to work. In a way that was a bit unfair … there have already been photos of Bishkek’s Mayor riding in a marshrutka, (minibus), but that was probably just a one off and the photographer chose to use it to concentrate attention on the Mayor’s rather expensive wristwatch instead of the fact that he using public transport, and the Prime Minister has declined to use a police car outrider as he drives to the office each morning.
In the meantime people are still experiencing rolling power cuts and this has led to protests. We’ve been quite lucky in that we’ve experienced very few cuts (and most of those have been in the early hours of the morning – before the working day starts). What we seem to have experienced, however, is an increase in power fluctuations. One managed to burn out my monitor. Fortunately, however, the computer itself was protected by a UPS and suffered no damage, although I have found some corruption of data files and so I am worrying more and more about making sure I do my backups.
The perpetual debate about the future of the Central Asia Power Supply Grid, established in the days of the Soviet Union, continues to rumble on with stories constantly appearing in the press about whether this country or that is considering, has decided, will or will not withdraw from the grid – and the likely effect on the consumers here in the country in each case.
The problem is not just with electricity. The gas company, (that is, natural gas – not petroleum), is also facing difficulty and is threatening to interrupt supplies if unpaid bills aren’t settled. Apparently there is something like nine million dollars of debts owed to the company. Yes, dollars, not soms. As a lot of individual homes, (as opposed to apartment blocks) are heated by gas, this could have serious implications for many people.
One person who presumably had Fun at Work was Saltanat Salatova, who won the Turkik version of the Eurovision Song Contest, netting the top 30,000 Euro prize. He probably didn’t enjoy the attention of the taxman, however, as the prize is subject to Income Tax … at the moment, that is. The politicians have now introduced an amendment to the Tax Code to exempt such prizes from taxable income. Another consequence of his success is that Kyrgyzstan gets to host next year’s competition.
Schoolchildren, at the moment, aren’t having much Fun at Work. The temperatures have been so cold that many have been sitting in classrooms in overcoats and so on as the heating systems have proved to be inadequate to heat the premises. In some regions the authorities have decided to close schools … in parts of Naryn oblast, for example, temperatures fell to minus forty and children were having to negotiate heavy snowfalls and drifts. According to one tweet there’s a school which apparently hasn’t seen any capital repairs for sixty years.
In these conditions, perhaps you don’t want very young children trudging their way to kindergarten, but it seems that even when the weather improves this still be a luxury for many. One parliamentarian decided to draw attention this week to the fact that less than one child in six has access to preschool education. Remember that, here, children start school at seven so that actually means more than it might in the UK or elsewhere.
It was also announced that less money was allocated from the budget for food for children in the country’s orphanages than is allocated for prisoners in its jails. It seems to me that there may be a little statistical manipulation in that and, as usual, it “raises more questions than it answers”, (for example, is that a per person figure?, how many prisoners and how many orphans? etc.), but it has proved to be a call to action and also appears to have been the inspiration for a rather cynical joke that appeared on the internet.
They are not exactly at work, but some people who are definitely not having any fun and enjoying themselves are the prisoners in Kyrgyzstan’s jails. Following the prison riot last week, many of them have continued their protest by staging a hunger strike and to prevent forced feeding have sewn up their mouths. Yes, that’s right, sewn up their mouths, (one of the reports on the internet even carried a warning that the material in the report might be distressing!). Almost two thousand of them, (yes, that’s tight, almost two thousand), inmates were involved at one point, although the latest reports suggest that some of them are abandoning their protest. In the meantime, the prison authorities are refusing to give in to the prisoners’ demands, such as leaving some cell doors unlocked to allow prisoners the opportunity to move around, saying things like, “it’s a prison, not a hotel” and continuing with regular searches of prisoner cells where it’s amazing what they say they have found.
It’s not all bad news however. It looks, for example, as if the isolation of some outlying regions brought about as due to the disappearance of flights to some of the country’s regional airports since the prohibition on the use of the AN-24 airplane, (which is old and now deemed unsuitable for service), may soon be resolved. Test flights using a different airplane, (a BAE-146, for those who understand these things), have been conducted and the resumption of flights is promised … soon. For those living in Batken, Djalal Abad and other places which have had flights discontinued since the ban was introduced probably can’t wait.
It’s been announced that pensions are to be increased, from May onwards. Mind you, some people who may be hoping for a bit more are the “Hero Mothers”, (mothers who have given birth to a large number of children – in the case of those grated the status of First Class, ten children). Apparently there are something like 11,000 who technically qualify for the special benefits accorded to them, but only about 900 actually receive them.
Once again, I’d like to say more … but as usual I have already well and truly exceeded my planned word limit and I don’t want to make reading the postcard too much like hard work. Anyway, I hope that you found it interesting, if not exactly fun.
Postcard from Bishkek: the weekly postcard that I send out as an email also gets posted on the website ianbek.kg each week – and there are other postcards which don’t get sent out. This week, for example, there were postcards about : Kyrgyzstan’s Rivers; Chinese New Year, the Year of the Dragon; Cycling tours in Kyrgyzstan, arising out of an article which appeared in Britain’s Daily Telegraph which must be a contender for the most linked to article about Kyrgyzstan so far this year; a press release I wrote for the Kyrgyz Association of Tour Operators about the proposal to license tour companies; the anniversaries which Kyrgyzstan is going to officially commemorate this year and one of Bishkek’s main streets – Togolok Moldo.
It is now possible to follow me on Facebook, (where I have specific pages for Celestial Mountains and ianbek … and also links.kg and Kyrgyz Diary), and on twitter, (@Bishkekpostcard and @celestialMTC ).
If you decide that you don’t want to receive these weekly postcards in your email anymore, please drop me a line to and I will take you off the distribution list. Alternatively, if you know someone who might be interested in being added to the mailing list, then get them to drop me a line and I’ll be happy to do so.
Bishkek