MARCH 25 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Along Kazakhstan’s southern border hundreds of labourers are working on a project that is supposed to reignite the old Silk Road and turn the country into a central trading hub once again.
It’s an ambitious $5.5b project to build a road that crosses this vast arid land prone to freezing, heavy winters and burning, hot summers.
Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev inaugurated the project in September 2009. Nearly five years later, work is still ongoing.
At a roadside outside Shymkent, a teeming city of 650,000 people on the border with Uzbekistan, Baurzhan surveyed his road-building teams.
“Our company is a small private local enterprise and we won a small tender. Together with other local companies we are building most access roads and smaller sections of the highway,” he told a Conway Bulletin correspondent.
“Our work is going well, but severe weather has delayed our work by at least three months.”
Heavy snow storms have smashed into southern Kazakhstan this year, flooding villages and infrastructure.
The road is supposed to link Lianyungang on China’s eastern coast with St Petersburg in Russia. It’s an 8,445km stretch, with 2,787km cutting through the Kazakh steppe.
But there is some debate over whether Kazakhstan will actually benefit from this super-highway.
In Shymkent, Nurzhan, a 26-year-old British educated university graduate, said: “The road won’t benefit Kazakhstan, as we will only be the link between two bigger markets.”
A commercial truck driver disagreed. “My brother is buying fifty brand new trucks,” he said. “We hope this investment will bring returns as soon as trade starts.”
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 177, published on March 26 2014)