Quarantine regime to be maintained in Kazakhstan

Coronavirus • 12 May, 2020

Quarantine regime to be maintained in Kazakhstan

Restrictive measures will be mitigated in stages depending on the situation in the regions. Deputy Prime Minister Yeraly Tugzhanov spoke about this at an online briefing in the government. Earlier Pesident Tokayev held a meeting of state commision.

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“Today, the Head of State Kassym-Jomart Tokayev announced the lifting of the state of emergency declared in the country on March 16, 2020. However, there is still the risk of coronavirus infection. The most important and necessary measure at the moment is the protection of public health, so the quarantine regime will still be maintained. We are all obligated to comply with his requirements,” said the deputy prime minister.

Quarantine measures will be considered individually, depending on the situation in the regions, decisions will be made in stages.

During the emergency, 18 meetings of state commissions were held, 500 decisions were made. These are decisions that related to the stabilization of the economic situation in the country, the solution of social issues of the population, the fulfillment of obligations regarding the personal lives of citizens.

“Thanks to timely measures, we were able to control the trend in the spread of infection. The increase in the incidence rate has decreased from 40-50% to 5-3% in recent weeks,” Tugzhanov said.

Large-scale measures were taken by the President of Kazakhstan to ensure the social well-being of the population.

“Despite the decline in the economic situation, the President said that the state will fulfill all its social obligations in due time. For this purpose, 3.4 trillion tenge were considered for 2020,” said the deputy prime minister.

In addition, by the decision of the Head of State, payments to about 4 million pensioners and recipients of benefits were indexed by 10% in annual terms. For these purposes, an additional 313 billion tenge were provided.

One million poor citizens are provided with food worth 7 billion tenge. 4.5 million citizens who lost their income were assigned social payments of 42,500 tenge. About 1.6 low-income families receive financial assistance to pay utility bills.

In a difficult period, the Birgemiz Public Foundation, created on the initiative of the First President – Elbasy, provided significant assistance to citizens of the regions most affected by the quarantine regime.

“Including, assistance was rendered to about 363 thousand citizens for 18 billion tenge. Five million masks were also given free of charge to families with low social status. More than 2 thousand doctors who found themselves at the forefront of the fight against coronavirus received financial assistance,” said the deputy prime minister.

In addition, during the emergency period, stabilization funds for food products were created in all regions, and despite the limitation of communication between regions due to quarantine, the population was stably provided with basic foodstuffs.

“As you remember, before the end of the year, VAT on 19 items of socially significant food products was reduced from 12% to 8%. As a result, aid was provided to commodity producers in the amount of 8.7 billion tenge,” Tugzhanov said.

For the planned work on spring sowing, Kazakhstani farmers allocated 70 billion tenge at a rate of 5% through JSC Agrarian Credit Corporation. This is 10% more than the annual amount. These measures covered 2,405 agrarian entities.

“I also want to note that during the pandemic, 12 thousand of our compatriots from 62 countries were returned to their homeland. Such work is still ongoing. According to the plan, we must return another 7 thousand citizens of Kazakhstan to the country,” the deputy prime minister summed up.

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