Foreign Experts Paid 47 Times More Than Local Scientists in Kazakhstan

The Agency for Civil Service Affairs has identified serious distortions in the system of science financing. After the inspection, the situation is promised to be corrected, Orda.kz reports.

The analysis revealed systemic shortcomings in the selection and implementation of scientific projects. It turned out that out of 13.5 thousand experts, about 75% did not actually participate in the work.

There are cases when the examination was carried out formally, and the results were adjusted in favor of individual applicants. Violations of the principles of objectivity were found in 30 studies totaling 11.5 billion tenge,the Agency for Civil Service Affairs specified.

A separate issue is how experts were paid. It turned out that foreign specialists were paid about 400 thousand tenge, while Kazakhstani scientists received only 8,500 tenge on average.

As a result of the analysis, more than 100 recommendations have been developed, and they have already begun to be implemented. Kazakhstan has approved a new method of calculating wages and introduced a unified approach — without dividing into «ours» and «others».

The country has also created a register of unscrupulous experts and project managers who violated scientific ethics or did not achieve the declared results. Those included on the list will temporarily not be able to participate in competitions until they confirm real achievements.

Earlier, we wrote about how grants worth hundreds of millions of tenge were stolen in Akmola region under the guise of scientific research. The prosecutor’s office revealed 13 fictitious projects. One of them destroyed 850 tons of seeds. The employees of the scientific center simply threw them into a dump. The damage exceeded 100 million tenge, and there is a criminal case on negligence.

Original author: Asel Turar