Kazakhstan rolls out 3-tier national system to better meet demand for personnel

The Minister on address social assistance

Kazakh Minister of Labor and Social Protection of Population, Berdibek Saparbayev, recalled of the task given by First Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev with regard to address social assistance for families with many children and low income. 

“As of 1 April 2019, as assigned by Elbasy (Leader of the Nation) revised conditions for providing address social assistance have been put in place, which include raising the criteria for granting assistance, guaranteed monthly assistance to one child amounting for 70% of the subsistence minimum or 20 789 tenge (around $55 – at the exchange rate of 377.18 tenge per dollar), excluding some allowances from overall household income. So far, address social assistance has covered over 277 thousand families or more than 1.3 million people. Total address social assistance for 67.7 billion tenge has been provided year to date, with the average payment of 105 thousand tenge” Berdibek Saparbayev stated. 

Made up of 11 different assistance, including free warm meals for primary school students as well as school uniforms, textbooks and stationery, discount fares on public transport for children and mothers, recreation in children’s camps, and so on, a unified package of social support services and measures has been drawn up together with the governor’s offices. 

The Minister accentuated that over 243 billion tenge would be allocated to cash benefits for giving birth, taking care of an infant below 1 year of age and social   maternity allowances in support of mothers and children. 

To ensure pensions are adequate, pension contributions of women on maternity leave are subsidised, with this year’s allocation of 5.8 billion tenge. 

Nowadays, Kazakhstan is the home for around 237 thousand mothers with 6 children or more for whom around 45 billion tenge is earmarked annually. 

“The draft road map titled “Bakytty bala – bakytty ana – bakytty orbasy – bakytty el” (happy child – happy mother – happy family – happy nation)” commissioned by the chief of the office of the President together with interested government agencies, public representatives, active citizens, has been worked out”, the Labor Minister told.

The Minister stops at the pension and social security measures

The average pension exceeds 85 thousand tenge throughout the country. 

“Last year saw the procedure for allocating the basic pension to be reorganised, with it directly dependent on length of employment. That resulted in the average growth by 80% in basic pensions of over 2.1 million people having the length of employment of more than 10 years”, the Minister said. 

His data indicate, as of 1 June this year, the average amount of basic pension is 27 thousand tenge and that of aggregate pension (solidary and basic) is 85 785 tenge. 

Stating on 1 January 2018, the structure of the subsistence minimum has been revised through increasing the non-food ratio from 40% to 45%, thus 3 million Kazakh citizens had a 16% rise in social payments associated with the amount.

In 2018, more than 6.1 million working citizens came under the obligatory social insurance system. To meet the task to strengthen the link between length of employment and social payments from the State fund of social insurance given by Elbassy, a new draft law on obligatory social insurance submitted to the Mazhilis (lower house of Parliament) for consideration was produced. 

“It is expected that social funds will rise by an average of 30% for loss of ability to work or loss of breadwinner and job”, he concluded. 

On salary increases 

In a bid to implement the October address of the First Kazakh President, the minimum salary has increased by a factor of 1.5 from 28 to 42.5 thousand tenge since the beginning of 2019, benefiting around 1.3 million people, including 275 thousand government staff from the education, health, social care, culture and sport sectors. 

“Monthly monitoring of the minimum wage system is carried out. So analyses of revenues from obligatory pension contributions show April this year 92 thousand workers have received the salary below the minimum. Salary increases among low-paid workers are also monitored. Now, more than 203 thousand employers have committed themselves to pay better 1.1 million people”, the Minister told.  

By up to 30% the salary of some workers of the budgetary sphere has grown from early June this year. Over 1 million civil servants from the health, education, social protection, culture, sport, agriculture and other sectors will be paid better starting this month.

The current average salary of one worker will be 114.5 thousand tenge (before 1 June 2019 – 99,6 thousand tenge), thanks through allocation of 144.3 billion tenge from the republic budget in 2019. 

How a demand for cadres will be forecasted 

Kazakhstan renews and prepared the labor market to meet the new challenges. 

The roll-out of the three-tier national system to forecast a demand for cadres is in place: a short term (1 year), medium term (5 years) and long term (by 2050).

“The system will give us the picture of what and how many specialists are in demand today or will be in a 5-10-year perspective, the areas and conditions of diversion of labor forces. The results will feed into development of state educational provisions to train specialists with secondary and higher education, short-term education and re-education”, the Minister told.

The national system of qualification is under way. 

“So far, 106 professional standards mirroring the employers’ requirements for knowledge, skills and competences have been designed, with other 480 professional standards and 38 industry-classified frameworks for professionalizing in 12 priority sectors are slated for this year. The standards will serve to update education programs”, Berdibek Saparbayev told. 

In effort to engage industry workers in developing the professional standards, in 2019 the project team, consisting of the chiefs of the line ministries, has been established. The Ministry supported by international experts elaborates the road map to develop the national system of qualification by 2025 that will be adopted in the second half of this year.

Photo by Bauyrzhan Zhuasbayev