Kazakhstan to Set Personal Responsibility on Local Officials for the Vaccination Campaign

Eraly Tugzhanov, a deputy prime minister in Kazakhstan believes that local officials responsible for the vaccination campaign should see some consequences if they failed to accomplish their task.

According to Tugzhanov, the reach of vaccination in some regions including Mangystau and Kostanay is too low. Just 163,200 and 323,900 people received their first doses, respectively. Another anti-champion is the city of Nur-Sultan where just 440,600 citizens received their first doses.

«We have discussed this issue many times during the Interagency Commission meeting and authorities all over the regions are well informed that they need to speed up the vaccination campaign but they haven’t. Now we believe it’s quite reasonable to order all the regions to beef up the vaccination based on the experience of the East Kazakhstan region. They have to put personal responsibility on those who are in charge of the vaccination in a region. If there is no progress, some disciplinary actions might be applied,» Tugzhanov stated.

It was expected that about 9.9 million people in the country would be vaccinated by the end of September while there are just 6.6 million people in Kazakhstan who are fully vaccinated. Only three regions including the East Kazakhstan region, the city of Shymkent, and the Turkestan region have done the government’s plan.

Now the government wants more people to get their vaccine as the number of eligible for shots had been increased up to 11.4 million. All of them must be vaccinated by the end of this year. 

Currently, there are more than eight million people who were vaccinated with the first shot (70.7% of the eligible population) and 7.1 million (63%) who have received the second dose.