NUR-SULTAN – Kazakhstan has restored the Ministry of Emergency Situations, as Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev signed the decree on Sept. 9, the Akorda press service reported.
Kazakh Government building in Nur-Sultan. Photo credit: primeminister.kz
The Ministry of Emergency Situations was abolished in 2014.
Tokayev announced the decision to bring back the ministry during his Sept. 1 state-of-the-nation address noting that the nation was in an “era of natural and man-made disasters.”
The Committee for Emergency Situations, previously part of the nation’s Ministry of Internal Affairs, will be reorganized into a new ministry to relieve the internal affairs ministry from non-сore functions, according to Tokayev, including in the prevention and elimination of natural and man-made emergencies, civil defense, fire safety, ensuring the maintenance and development of the system to prevent and eliminate emergency situations, prevention, and extinguishing of fires.
The new ministry also assumes the functions of the Ministry of Industry and Infrastructural Development in the formation and implementation of the state policies in industrial safety, and of the Ministry of National Economy in the formation and development of the state material reserves.
The same day, Tokayev signed a decree to create the Agency for Strategic Planning and Reforms. It will be responsible for the development of reforms, coordination of state bodies and quasi-state institutions in the state planning system, coordination of proposals from state bodies designed to improve the public administration system as well as strategic forecasting and analysis of the nation’s development and the global situation the country finds itself in.
Kazakhstan will also have a new Agency for the Protection and Development of Competition, which will take over the functions of the national economy ministry in the protection of competition and restriction of monopolistic activity in commodity markets, and the control, and regulation of activities related to state monopolies.
