Residents of Shymkent are complaining en masse about an unpleasant smell in the air, and authorities are now trying to identify the source of the pollution. The city akim has instructed ecologists to find the culprit, infohub.kz reports.
Locals suspect that a certain enterprise is causing the discomfort. "Sometimes you just want to rest, lie down, but I can't breathe. We sleep with the window open. But there's constantly some smell of burning, smoke. In the evening it's stronger. It smells different, but always unpleasant," said local resident Asel Malik.
According to residents, the situation has worsened since the beginning of summer — breathing has become especially difficult at night. Local ecologists continue to assure that there is no cause for concern. Six air quality monitoring posts operate in the city, and they have not recorded extreme values. However, this year 37 enterprises have already been fined for exceeding emission limits. At the same time, specialists believe the residents' perceptions but do not consider the presence of pollutants in the air to be too high or dangerous.
"We attribute this to the opening of new enterprises, which are opening every day in the industrial zone. For example, from 2023 to today, our gross emissions, let's say, have increased from 31,000 to 40,000 tons per year. We do not deny the smell. It exists, but there are city-forming enterprises. There are no enterprises without harmful emissions," said Yermakhan Kozybayev, head of the Shymkent ecology department.