In the village of Sogaly in Kazakhstan's Aktobe Region, about 230 kilometers from the regional center, parents of schoolchildren are raising the alarm: every day their children must travel to school in the neighboring village of Kogaly across an unsafe crossing on the Kobda River, the website infohub.kz reports.
The school in Sogaly itself closed more than ten years ago. There are now 12 school-age children living in the village, and all of them are transported daily by a Gazelle minibus. However, there is no bridge over the river separating the two settlements — the vehicle uses a crossing that local residents have long called unsafe.
"We are afraid to send our children to school. The Gazelle takes them four times a day, but the crossing is unsafe and barely holds up. There have already been cases here where vehicles overturned and a person died. And in spring the river fills with meltwater and overflows its banks. Then the children do not go to school for two months and study at home online," villager Makhambet Amirgaliyev said.
Sogaly residents recall that two years ago the river nearly swallowed the villages themselves. The flood was so severe that people were evacuated by helicopter. At the same time, local residents do not want to leave the village and are waiting for gas, which has been promised to the settlement.
The district akimat said both villages are sparsely populated, so no bridge construction is planned. Residents are being offered the option of enrolling their children in schools in other settlements. However, that could put the school in Kogaly at risk of closure: it currently has only 35 students, 12 of them from Sogaly.
"We are aware of the problem facing the residents of Sogaly and Kogaly. However, no funding for bridge construction is provided in the budget. We will look for sponsors who can allocate funds to repair the crossing," said Kanat Mynbayev, deputy akim of Kobda District.