Nurlan Uteshev: Kazakhstan’s trade unions actively participated in the campaign to explain the meaning of constitutional amendments

At a meeting with international observers from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, Nurlan Uteshev, deputy Chairman of the Federation of Trade Unions of the Republic of Kazakhstan, stressed, “The Federation of Trade Unions is the largest public organization in Kazakhstan. We have about 1,638,000 members.”
According to him, all of them are united by more than 16,000 primary trade union organizations. The Federation has 23 sectoral and 17 regional trade-union associations.
Observers were interested in the attitude of such an impressive force to the proposed amendments to the Constitution of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the Federation’s participation in their development.
Nurlan Uteshev noted that more than six hundred thousand members of trade-union associations had been engaged in campaigning for the referendum, and the collegiate trade-union bodies had supported the proposed amendments to the Constitution of the Republic of Kazakhstan.
For a month, trade unions held meetings to explain to primary organizations the meaning of the proposed amendments.
“We understand that everything will not change overnight, a lot of work is needed to amend the legislation, and here we have certain suggestions. We work closely with the Mazhilis and local representative bodies, we have representatives of trade unions in the Mazhilis, and through them we try to pursue our policy,” Mr Uteshev said.
In turn, Faizullo Barotzoda, the CSTO PA international observers’ coordinator and Chairman of the Parliamentary Ethics Commission of the Majlisi Namoyandagon of the Majlisi Oli of the Republic of Tajikistan, stressed that the CSTO PA international observers acted based on the principles of political neutrality, objectivity, non-interference in the referendum process, respect of legislation of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the Convention on Standards of Democratic Elections, Voting Rights and Freedoms in the State Parties of the CIS.