Kazakhstanis Paid About $2.8 Million in Fees for COVID-19 Quarantine Violations

Over the period from January 1 to May 31, the total amount of financial penalties for breaking quarantine rules reached $2.8 million, according to the Committee on Sanitary Epidemiologic Control of the Ministry of Health.

Over this period monitoring groups made 94,788 raids and checked 585,343 businesses. More than 16,000 enterprises in the East Kazakhstan, Turkestan and Almaty regions as well as in the cities of Almaty and Shymkent consistently violated sanitary rules.

Among typical violations are massive events and continued work of companies that were told to stop working. In total, the monitoring groups initiated 300 administrative cases and temporarily stopped the activity of 76 businesses. They have also fined 9,100 small and medium-sized businesses and 6,800 individuals due to non-compliance with the regime of quarantine. By early May 2021, the total amount of penalties accounted for more than $2.3 million.

COVID-19 infections hit Kazakhstan on March 13, 2020. Three days later President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev declared a state of emergency with a total quarantine in Nur-Sultan and Almaty starting from March 19. The president extended the state of emergency twice, on April 14 and 27. 

Currently, the strengthening or softening of the quarantine measures depends on the decisions of chief sanitary doctors in each region. They can estimate the current situation by putting it in three zones: red zone with the highest level of risk; green zone with the lowest level of risk, and yellow zone in the middle.