DanChurchAid
Kyrgyzstan & Kazakhstan
Curse of the cotton factory
In the middle of the country’s largest city, Almaty, a factory block spreads out along several streets. During the Soviet era, the factory was known for its huge production of cotton.
Young girls from all over Central Asia were brought in to Almaty as labour and were housed in dormitories affiliated with the factory.
Today, large parts of the production have closed down, but the girls – who in the meantime have become worn out mothers and sometimes wives – still live in the same dormitories.
The lack of maintenance over many years has also left its traces. The light green wall paint in the long dormitory corridors has faded. Here and there a broken light bulb is dangling from the ceiling.
Almost 200 families are crammed into the small rooms and they often have to go without electricity, water and heating.
“It costs 5,000 tenge (approx. DKK 200) a month in ongoing overheads to live here but not many people can afford to pay this. If the factory is running and we are lucky to get work for a month, we still only earn 2,000 – 3,000 tenge”, explains 42 year-old Polina Bogdanova. She has lived in the dormitory since she was 15 years old.
Entrepreneurial women
Polina Bogdanova would be more than happy to have steady employment and to find a better place to live but it is impossible. She cannot move away because she, like many others, owes money to the cotton plant. Money she needed to pay for their ongoing overheads.
The cotton plant is only one of several factories in Kazakhstan that has lost its export markets since the breakdown of the Soviet Union.
Unemployed people from the whole country are flocking to Almaty hoping to find work. This has resulted ina big lack of housing in the city and made the chances to get a job microscopic.
On one account, Polina Bogdanova is lucky. After many years’ work in the cotton dust, some of her colleagues have lost their sight or developed kidney and lung diseases. Polina can still work, and thanks to the local organisation Moldir she has set up her own small rug cleaning company together with her 19 year-old daughter.
After attending a course at Moldir, she learned how to run a company and has borrowed money for the initial capital. It means there is now food on the table and she also has an opportunity to pay off some of the debt owed to the factory.
Other women from the dormitory have taken the course at Moldir and have now set up a hairdresser in their small entrance hall, established cafes by the bus station and also set up a stall in one of Almaty’s many markets.
A year ago, the women also set up self-help groups where they support each other both financially and morally. There used to be 14 kindergartens attached to the factory. Today there are none left so instead the women babysit each other’s children when they are working. Some times they have to leave their children on their own in the dormitories.
Sick people have to pay for themselves
Every self-help group has a couple of members who are in particular need of support. One of them is Damesh Arystangalieva. She is blind and has a disabled son. Her husband is unable to work after having had meningitis.
“I have worked at the factory as a weaver for 22 years and the only thing I have to show for it is a small room. The management of the factory couldn’t care less if people became ill, and we won’t get any compensation”, she says.
Her son who is ten years old has never gone to school. He has polio and has to spend his days at home on the sofa. Neither he nor his parents receive any treatment from the authorities as the healthcare system is both corrupt and poor. If you are sick, you have to pay for yourself.
“In this country a doctor won’t normally start an operation till he has received money under the table. And that is regardless of the patient’s condition: they could have open wounds and be bleeding to death”, explains the director of Moldir, Lyazzat Ismukthamedova. He has arranged for Damesh Arystangalievas’ son to spend a month in a sanatorium.
“People still have some rights even though charges for social care have been introduced. But very few people know the law”, says Lyazzat Ismukthamedova who has employed a legal advisor for the organisation. He helps the women pressurising the management of the cotton plant to pay them a pension, something they have avoided for several years.
Kazakhstan
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