Kazakh pension scandals stir criticism of government
Media trainer Anara Kuandikova, 29, is typical of the generation of post-independence professionals who have most to lose if anything goes wrong with oil-rich Kazakhstan’s scandal-struck Unified Pension Fund.
“I still see my pension contributions as a real investment in my future,” said Kuandikova, who works in Astana and pays a tenth of her $600 monthly salary — one-and-a-half times the national average wage — into the fund. “But the more negative information you hear, the more you begin to doubt how much of the money you contributed you will see in old age,” she said. “And the more you hear, the more you worry.”
Struck by a series of scandals since the beginning of the year, the Unified Pension Fund has become an emblem of the tension between the Central Asian state’s self-image as a modernizing power of the future and growing public clamor over state corruption and mismanagement.
Read full content: Nikkei Asian Review
