Focus on economic struggles in the north

Aidar Samaev is a man who believes in his town. Despite the atmosphere of dejection hanging over the place, its ugly, cracked tenement buildings, street after street lined with derelict buildings and factories, and despite the fact that Semipalatinsk’s only claim to fame - or infamy - is that it was once the site of the Soviet Union’s largest nuclear test site, he still believes that his town can become great again. "Our country is strong and our town is strong. There is no limit to what we can do here," said Samaev as he watched his home football team playing a league match against a rival team from the west of the country. "Look at our team. Even they will be great one day, competing against the finest teams in Europe. We can rebuild our factories and rebuild our industry, we can make our town an attraction for all the world." Samaev’s enthusiasm is certainly infectious, but it is born of a seemingly unfounded optimism in the context of the wholesale economic collapse that has brought Semipalatinsk progressively to its knees over the past decade. Today thousands of its inhabitants are unemployed, its industrial base has rusted to ruin and the little international assistance trickling through to it is nothing but a drop in the ocean. Samaev is the deputy mayor of Semipalatinsk, a medium-sized former industrial town straddling the Kazakh-Russian border, and which once was the venue of the Polygon nuclear test site. But with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, not only was Polygon closed down but the town's industrial base, whose factories once employed half its 350,000 inhabitants, serving markets spread right across the USSR, collapsed. The processing plant which supplied tinned meat to the entire Red Army, the factory which made boots for police and soldiers across the Soviet Union, and the mill which produced tens of thousands of uniforms all lost their markets with the collapse of the Soviet state. And ironically the closure of the Polygon hammered yet another nail into Semipalatinsk’s economic coffin when the industries and factories set up to serve the test site likewise lost their outlet. Unemployment skyrocketed - plunging the town deep into a spiral of dependency for which the Soviet Union had left no safety net. "The factories we had built and the products those factories manufactured were designed to serve the entire Soviet Union, and they operated at the behest of the military complex. Overnight, that vanished and overnight we were in deep trouble. Lots of us were in deep trouble," said Samaev. One by one the town's industries ground to a halt, some closing almost immediately as it became apparent that they had neither a market nor money to enable them launch new lines of production. A few managed to keep going until 1997 when all state support for industry ended. Then, they too collapsed. People like 56-year-old Baktybala Eskygzh, who had worked in the pride of Semipalatinsk’s industry - the footwear factory - is one of the many thousands who lost their jobs in consequence. "We supplied shoes all over the Soviet Union and our shoes were famous in Russia and other places. But when Kazakhstan became independent, who was going to buy our shoes? Of course we had to close," she said. The factory's demise initiated almost a decade of despair for Eskygzh, during which survival was contingent on a small pension and the charity of friends. But last year that uncertainty began to ease when Eskygzh and a group of women friends received a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) micro-credit loan to aid their small grocery business. "Life is much better since I got the loan and joined the programme," said Eskygzh, who now borrows - and repays at a nominal eight percent interest - US $200 every four months. "These days I feel in control of my life again, I feel that my life is back in my own hands. I don’t have to depend on others any more." But for every woman such as Eskygzh there are 100 others who only know despair. "People are really suffering here economically," said Zhumagul Khairlybaeva, a UNDP micro-credit manager. "I think the worst year was 1997 when at least 20,000 people lost their jobs. And I should also tell you that 70 percent of those were women. If we are to stop this town from stagnating completely we really need help." In total, UNDP’s micro-credit programme now has more than 1,000 clients, and the number of beneficiaries continues to grow. "All our clients are women," said Anara Karazhanova, a UNDP loans officer. "They are more trustworthy than men, and in most cases have suffered more from the collapse of the Soviet Union than men, because the factories were mostly staffed by women." Like most micro-credit schemes, credits are restricted to groups of at least five women. After applying for a loan, the women attend a workshop during which the programme is explained and they are taught basic business skills. By grouping the women together, they become collectively responsible for repayment. If one member fails to pay her share, the remaining members must compensate for her default or face expulsion from the programme. Anara said the programme enjoyed a 97 percent repayment ratio, a figure of which she was justifiably proud, recalling in this context the fact that most of the defaulters were those who had been hard hit by an overnight 100 percent devaluation of the Kazakh currency in 1999. "The women who survived that, we now refer to as our star clients. It is a testament to the success of the programme and its members that it did not collapse entirely when the currency was devalued." Most of the programme's funding comes from the Japanese government, which has extended considerable support to the people of Semipalatinsk, regarding them as fellow victims of the nuclear age. Tokyo hosted an international conference on Semipalatinsk in 1999 at which donors pledged a total aid package of $20 million to help the people of the town overcome their nuclear legacy. [See IRIN story at http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=28119]. But donors have been slow to honour their pledges, and as a result UNDP has been unable to expand its micro-credit schemes as much as it might have wished. Meanwhile, despite the success of the programme to date, and despite the diligence and enthusiasm of people like Aidar Samaev, Semipalatinsk's problems seem to multiply faster than they can be resolved. Now, sitting at his desk in his office, Samaev is not only the town's deputy mayor but also godfather to the town’s fledgling business community. He oversees a $300,000 loan, again from the Japanese government, to avail small loans to small businesses. "We are trying to rebuild some of our industries - but on a small scale - again. We want to reopen the factories and get the people of Semipalatinsk back to work again." But can he really expect to revitalise his town’s fortunes with the aid of a $300,000 loan? "OK, so we need help," he acknowledges, "but we can still become a great town."