Deputy Questions Jasyl Damu’s Spending

Two years after the controversial Operator ROP was replaced by the new environmental operator Jasyl Damu JSC, Majilis deputy Yekaterina Smyshlyayeva believes the reform has fallen flat. According to her, the money collected through the "utility fund" is just sitting idle in bank accounts, while waste continues to pile up in landfills, Orda.kz reports.

In a formal parliamentary inquiry, Smyshlyayeva strongly criticized Jasyl Damu, calling the state of waste recycling in Kazakhstan “catastrophic.”

Of course, I’d rather not air dirty laundry in public, especially when there’s nowhere to air it. But the results of this new approach are disheartening. Kazakhstan generates around five million tons of household waste annually, and only 26% is recycled. And by recycling, I mean basic sorting, not deep processing, Smyshlyayeva said. 

The numbers are even more alarming when it comes to industrial waste: of the estimated one billion tons produced, only 11% is recycled—the rest goes straight to landfills. By contrast, Japan sends less than 5% of its waste to landfills.

Jasyl Damu currently holds no less than 406 billion tenge, either in its own accounts or with second-tier banks. Half of that amount was transferred from the former ROP in 2023, while the rest was, let’s say, ‘earned through hard work.’ And that hard work doesn’t come cheap — administrative expenses for the operator total nearly four billion tenge a year, the deputy noted. 

Of the 140 billion tenge earmarked for environmental improvements, only 3.5 billion — just 2.5% — was spent on actual waste processing.

Most were used to purchase buses, road equipment, and agricultural machinery.

Sure, these things are useful—but that’s not what the money was meant for, Smyshlyayeva stressed. 

She accused Jasyl Damu of being eager to spend, but lacking clarity or strategy, citing proposals to subsidize garbage collection tariffs, fund questionable research, and other ambiguous initiatives.

In her inquiry, the deputy called for:

• A full audit of Jasyl Damu’s expenditures and staffing
• Parliamentary oversight
• Implementation of digital tenge to trace spending
• Tighter regulations ensuring funds are used strictly for waste recycling

Original Author: Zhadra Zhulmukhametova