Kazakhstan Scrapped Costly Time Zone Impact Study, Used Existing Data Instead

Minister of Science and Higher Education Sayasat Nurbek commented on the situation surrounding the study of the impact of Kazakhstan's transition to a single time zone, Orda.kz reports.

He reported that initially, it was planned to spend about 161 million tenge on a large-scale study at the request of the Ministry of Health. Then the amount was reduced to 60 million tenge.

Later we completely abandoned this idea, the competition was not held, and no money from the budget was spent, the head of the Ministry of Science clarified.

The reason was the study's length — three years.

Nobody would have waited three years for results. After discussions with the Ministries, we realized that all the necessary data was already available: clinical statistics from the Ministry of Health, data on electricity consumption from the Ministry of Energy and local Akimats, information on the work of enterprises from the Ministry of Industry. Therefore, we decided not to spend additional money, but to collect and carefully analyze the existing data, the Minister added.

Monitoring was carried out by an interdepartmental working group involving scientific institutes and leading universities in the country, such as the Eurasian National University, Al-Farabi University, and Satpayev University.

Nurbek also emphasized that the monitoring showed the absence of any significant impact of time zone change on public health, electricity consumption, labor activity, and other indicators. The results have already been presented to the government and submitted to the Majilis.

Parliament members and the government will make the final decision after a separate discussion.

Original Author: Artyom Volkov