“They’re Used to Impunity”: Oral Authorities Copy-Paste General Plan from Semey and Qaraganda

On July 15, the Kazakh Internet lit up with discussion after serious discrepancies were discovered in Oral’s new general plan.

As it turns out, large parts of the document weren’t about Oral at all, but about Semey and Qaraganda. An Orda.kz correspondent looked into what went wrong with the plan that cost 250 million tenge.

It all began when Oral resident Danil Makatukha made a bold statement during public hearings on the new draft.

You have beautiful presentations, nice slides, and you speak very eloquently about our city’s development prospects. But in the three volumes of the explanatory note to the Oral general plan... in the section ‘Urban lands and their use,’ it talks about Qaraganda’s lands — and says nothing about Oral. In the list of historical and cultural monuments of national importance, most of the sites are in Semey. The same goes for the chapter on ancient architecture. Are you planning to move those monuments to Oral? asked Makatukha.

He pointed out that the same unrelated content appears in sections on transport infrastructure, utilities, landscaping, flood protection, and stormwater systems — many pages describe Qaraganda, not Oral.

Makatukha even called attention to a section titled “Landscaping of the Mine Zone,” which is located in Qaraganda.

Media reports say the Oral general plan was developed over two years and cost 250 million in public funds. This document is meant to serve as the blueprint for all future urban planning, encompassing new roads, cultural and industrial projects, and monument preservation. If it truly amounts to a hodgepodge of copied material from unrelated cities, it’s more than just a scandal — it’s a massive failure by the local authorities.

“This Isn’t a Technical Glitch, It’s Corruption”

We asked Nikolay Issayev — an honored builder of Kazakhstan and member of the Abay region’s public council—for his thoughts. He lives in Semey, the very city whose features were apparently copied into Oral’s plan.

Issayev said he hasn’t reviewed the Oral plan in full yet, but he commented based on his experience in construction and involvement in drafting Semey’s general plan, which was approved last year.

Frankly, I think someone should sue the contractors and Oral officials who approved this plan for using our cultural monuments. Of course, I’m joking. But there’s always some truth in a joke: this happened because the executive authorities spend public money carelessly. Because it’s not their money. If we took that money back — from the Akim down to the last clerk who glanced at this plan — they might think twice next time. But now, it’s just a money-making conveyor belt. Drawing up general plans has become a very profitable business,says Nikolay Issaev. 

Officials in the Oral Akimat claim the issue is due to a technical error. According to them, there’s a correct version of the general plan somewhere, and the fragments from Semey and Qaraganda were inserted by accident.

But Issayev is deeply skeptical of that explanation. He says only someone extremely naïve would buy it.

Issayev added that if he were Oral’s Akim, he would’ve already resigned. He believes such glaring negligence happened because officials have grown used to impunity.

This is a general plan for a regional capital. Back in the 1970s, when Semey’s old general plan was being drafted, everyone reviewed it, you know? Everyone looked at it, everyone participated, and everyone knew what was planned and how. And this one — did anyone even read it? Clearly not. They’ve grown so used to the idea that a regional Akim doesn’t resign, doesn’t fire his deputy in charge of this area. And almost all the deputies are involved. This affects the deputy overseeing industry, the one overseeing culture, because all of that is part of the general plan. They should’ve all reviewed it. It should’ve been a team effort. So, there is no team, that's all. And if there’s no team, then the team needs to be replaced,said Nikolay Issayev.

Fiction Instead of Master Plans

The Oral case is outrageous—but it’s not an isolated incident. Nikolay Issayev pulls out the most recent master plan for Semey, approved in October 2024. It, too, is riddled with errors, shortcomings, and at times, pure fantasy.

For instance, the plan claims that 100% of Semey’s housing stock has access to running water. That doesn’t even match official statistics—several large districts in Semey still lack water access as of 2025.

In 2023, Antikor noted that nearly half of the water supply systems in the Abay region existed only on paper and were non-functional. But when this master plan was developed, even the embellished official numbers were ignored. It simply stated: everyone has running water. If this has since been corrected, it would have had to be done retroactively.

The city’s stated development priorities in the general plan are just as baffling. This section appears to have been copied wholesale, much like what happened in Oral.

Priority areas: production of overhead and gantry cranes, cable products, electrical equipment, railway and agricultural machinery, vehicle manufacturing, small aircraft, photovoltaic modules, and cars. All of this was copied from somewhere else. For instance, why should we be producing overhead cranes here? Launch production? We don’t have anything even close to that, says Nikolay Issayev.

A close review of the plan makes it clear that it was developed without any real understanding of the city’s needs. Some sections appear to have been lifted directly from other documents, while genuinely important points were ignored.

According to Issayev, on a five-point scale, the work doesn’t even deserve a two. Still, he admits the Semey plan is better than Oral’s — if only because it has at least some logical structure and fewer borrowed fragments.

On paper, Kazakhstan’s public administration appears to improve year after year: extensive documentation is drafted for each major project, and public hearings are held. But in practice, much of it is done superficially, and often carries serious corruption risks.

If everything that happened in Oral was merely a mistake, how is it possible that entire sections about other cities made it into the general plan of a major regional center, and not a single one of the dozens of officials responsible noticed?

And what exactly was the 250 million tenge spent on? A basic copy-paste job?

Orda.kz will continue to track the fate of Oral’s general plan and investigate where the 250 million tenge actually went.

Original Author: Ilya Barokhovsky