President delivers address to the nation every year: Ambassador Kistafin

Staff Report

ISLAMABAD: Ambassador of Kazakhstan Yerzhan Kistafin has said  President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev in his address to the nation assured that his government would undertake all possible steps to improve the lot of the people and further develop infrastructure.

The ambassador made these observations during a press conference at his residence on Thursday.

He said, every year the President Tokayev delivers his address to the Nation, articulating his views and must-to-do things to keep Kazakhstan on the track of progress and sustainable development. The President’s  address for 2021 was took place just a couple of weeks ago and it was an excellent update of what is to be done in our country in a very short-run.

Ambassador Kistafin said, the first part of the address was about economic development of the country in post-Covid-19 term. This development comprises mostly the measures to be taken by the government in the field of supporting business, employment, industrialization and strategic sectors of economy, like agriculture.

The second part was about increasing the efficiency of national Healthcare system.

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted vulnerabilities of our national healthcare system in many ways. This is why the President made it clear that Kazakhstan should be better prepared for this sort of challenges in the future through developing its capacity in biological security, pharmaceuticals industry.

The third part was about high-quality education.  In this field the President tasked authorities concerned to provide sufficient telecommunication systems to cover all school and university students for them to be able to study online.

Secondary education is mandatory in Kazakhstan and the right for that education is protected by our national Constitution, what makes make our people almost 100% literate. At the same time it leads to a problem of shortage of schools and teachers.

To resolve this problem the President tasked the Government to construct 1000 new schools across Kazakhstan by the 2025 and take all necessary additional measures to increase social status of schoolteachers and make their salaries competitive.

The fourth part of the address was about improvement of our regional policy, which is always an urgent matter, given huge territorial size of Kazakhstan and physical distances between the regions and the Center. It means that regional authorities should be constantly more involved in resolving local problems of any kind with no wasting time to coordinate their actions with the Center, which in case of Kazakhstan may be far away from a region concerned. This is the reason of why the quality of regional civil service is the issue, closely related to domestic political stability.

The fifth part of the address was about making the domestic labour market adequate to the global trends.

The President paid a particular attention in this regard on growing emergence of online-services in our labour market and people, who are employed in providing online-services, just couriers or taxi-drivers. These people are now also to be legally protected socially in terms of their pensions, tax payments, medical insurance and etc.

Kazakhstan, whose vast territory is largely under populated, is a target for incoming labour migrants. The involvement of big amount of labour migrants from the outside into the Kazakh economy is also to be transparent and corruption-free in legal terms. So, the President tasked the Government to take urgent measures to get labour rights of migrants in Kazakhstan protected, as well as the rights of Kazakhstan citizens, working outside of the country.

The final part of the address was traditionally about the unity of the Kazakh society. The population of Kazakhstan, which unevenly dispersed across the vast landmass, constantly needs the sense of their unity as one nation. This is the endless process, which is always to be updated, according to ongoing realities and challenges.

For this reason it is a duty of the President to remind that our unity is not something to be taken for granted.

(Note: More details about the Presidential address and Pakistan, Kazakhstan bilateral relations shall be published on Monday in the second part of the interview of Ambassador Kistafin)