Prime minister may depart for flood threatened South Kazakhstan

A board meeting in the Ministry of Justice, in which prime minister Danial Akhmetov was expected to participate, may be transferred from today, February 9, to a later term. According to Johann Merkel, first vice minister of justice of RK, "the prime minister called us and said that he could not participate because of the complicated situation in the South."

Earlier it was reported that due to a big mass of water coming from the Toktogul reservoir there was a flood danger on the territories adjacent to the Shardara reservoir in Kazakhstan.

If the volumes of inflowing water do not recede in the nearest future the water mass in the Shardara reservoir is going to reach critical 5 billion cubic metres. On Monday, February 7, Kyrgyz authorities promised to lower the volume of the water discharges from the Toktogul reservoir to 650 cubic metres per second. On the same night the Kazakhstani government delegation departed for Tashkent to discuss the same problem with their Uzbek colleagues. Kazakhstan hopes to reach an agreement on an increase of water discharges from the Shardara reservoir to Arnasai depression, Uzbekistan.

KZ-today correspondent has learned that currently personal participation of D. Akhmetov in the negotiations with Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan is discussed in Astana.