Bishkek, Jan. 9, 2018 / Kabar /. Currently, about 1 million people in Kyrgyzstan do not have access to clean drinking water, says in the Special Report of the Ombudsman Institute. The document contains extensive information on the situation with clean drinking water and sanitation in Kyrgyzstan, as well as recommendations to various state authorities.
The research and recommendations of the report are aimed at protecting the rights of citizens who lack an access to clean drinking water. The report was prepared not only to draw the attention of Kyrgyz state authorities to the most acute problems, but also to ensure that these problems are solved consistently and systematically.
In particular, the report says that currently about 1 million people do not have access to clean drinking water in Kyrgyzstan. It is a sad fact taking into account that Kyrgyzstan is one of the richest countries in water resources among post-Soviet Central Asian countries.
The current situation with water supply in Kyrgyzstan cannot be called favorable, the report says. After the liquidation of Soviet collective and state farms, rural drinking water supply systems were in abandoned situation for more than 10 years, which led to an intensive deterioration of their technical condition and then to a complete stoppage of their functioning in most of the republic's villages.
The Kyrgyz National Statistics Committee states that today there are 1,891 settlements in the country, including 1805 villages. Of these, 725 villages (38%) do not have sufficient access to centralized water supply system and in more than 400 (22%) villages there are no water supply networks at all, which makes the population to take water from open sources, 267 (14%) villages have water pipelines built before the 60s of last century, in 396 (21%) villages there are no water pipes at all.
Based on results of the study conducted by the Ombudsman Institute, it can be concluded that the origins of the current crisis in providing clean drinking water and sanitation services to the population lie: in the imperfection of the normative base of Kyrgyzstan; in large gaps in the legislation of the republic; in the poverty of the population; in inequality of opportunity, which is exacerbated by social and economic problems - accelerated urbanization, climate change, increased pollution and depletion of water resources.
Nevertheless, we are sure that the problems of providing people with access to clean drinking water can be resolved. This requires improved and adapted legislation in this area, which will fully meet modern requirements and take into account the national interests of the society.
In addition, the population's access to clean drinking water and sanitation services should be considered in the context of protection of constitutional human rights. Therefore, to implement these tasks, a large amount of investments are allocated to Kyrgyzstan from a number of international organizations.
According to the state program aimed at the development of drinking water supply and sanitation facilities in the settlements of the сountry for 2014-2024, almost 6.9 billion soms will be directed to construction and rehabilitation of water pipes in 425 villages of the republic, and construction of a drainage system in 27 district centers - 1.6 billion soms.
This program was the first document in the history of the sovereign Kyrgyzstan aimed at solving the problem of providing the population with clean drinking water. The total amount required for delivering quality water supply services to the rural population exceeds 20 billion soms (333.9 million dollars).
It should be noted that over the past decade, international donors have already invested considerable resources in the rehabilitation of the water supply system in Kyrgyzstan, but the problems remain unresolved, at least, not being solved to a sufficient extent.
From the information provided by the Prosecutor General's Office of Kyrgyzstan, it is known that since the implementation of Taza-Suu (Clean Water) project, a number of inspections have been carried out by the prosecutor's office, which resulted in 3 protests, 21 submissions, 10 orders to eliminate violations of the normative legal act, 10 warnings of inadmissibility of the law. In addition, on the fact of misuse of funds, 26 criminal cases were instituted, 19 of them at the end of the investigation were sent to the court where they issued relevant judicial acts.
Moreover, during the investigation, due to the circumstances established by criminal law, 4 criminal cases were terminated (2 of them on non-rehabilitating, 2 on rehabilitating grounds), 2 were suspended (1 of them by court, 1 by investigation) and currently one criminal case is being investigated. The amount of damage in criminal cases reimbursed to the state income was - 6 372 251 soms.
In addition, according to the information of the Accounts Chamber of Kyrgyzstan, large amounts of budget funds were used inefficiently, and therefore constructed or reconstructed water supply systems are failing, which is the reason for increasing the number of complaints from water users addressed to various instances.
Soon, the Ombudsman Institute intends to hold public and parliamentary hearings on this Special Report in order to promote the rights of citizens to clean drinking water.
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