Kyrgyzstan
Authorities tighten oversight in important sector.
Sep 11, 2025
EURASIANET
A Kyrgyz construction worker wearing a bucket hat and sandals hammers while standing on a narrow beam on the twelfth story of an apartment block in the Oktyabr District of Bishkek on June 12, 2025. Construction injuries, especially serious falls, have spiked in Kyrgyzstan as construction has boomed. (Photo: Alexander Thompson/Eurasianet)
On February 8, a construction worker in his early forties fell to his death from the eighth story of a building on Bishkek’s southeast side just a week after another worker in his early fifties fell from a construction site and died in the same district.
Two months earlier, on the evening of November 27, 2024, an 18-year-old construction worker fell from an apartment tower and died, again on the southeast side.
A few months prior to that incident, downtown this time, a worker fell to his death from the upper floors of another apartment block under construction – this one, local media Vesti reported, was being built illegally.
Construction is booming in Bishkek. Massive apartment towers – and in the south of the city, whole new neighborhoods – have sprouted on practically every available plot of land amid steady economic growth and heavy investment by the President Sadyr Japarov’s government in housing and infrastructure.
But the steady drumbeat of construction deaths in the headlines highlights a tragic side effect of a building boom that has won the government much praise.
Numbers released by the State Committee for National Security showed that the most common cause of serious injury on sites – falls – has soared in Kyrgyzstan from 11 cases in 2022 to 73 cases in 2023 and 172 cases in 2024. In the first three months of this year, there were more than 30 cases, according to the committee’s figures.
“The construction sector is the most dangerous,” said Usen Nurmanbetov, deputy chair of the Professional Construction Workers Union of Kyrgyzstan.
The State Committee for National Security has taken notice. A statement issued by the government agency lays the blame for the injuries and deaths squarely on “inadequate” safety measures, negligence and corruption by government safety inspectors and construction companies.
In the statement, the committee also accuses companies of buying off injured or dead workers’ relatives to avoid legal claims and says safety inspectors have “colluded” with companies to let them start construction without fulfilling safety requirements.
In the spring, security services agents arrested Tilek Kadykeev, head of the agency that conducts construction inspections, and Ernis Minkeev, the general director of Avangard Style, one of the country’s biggest construction companies, in connection with a construction accident in May. Both were released to house arrest a few days after they were taken into custody.
“It’s a very important signal to the construction sector,” said Eldiyar Karachalov, a former construction union official and labor law expert. “It means that the government is starting to take safety and responsibility for violations very seriously.”
Avangard did not comment in the local press on the arrest at the time.
Representatives of the construction industry say construction safety has greatly improved in the past few years, and the rise in accidents is because the number of sites and workers on them has exploded.
“Conscientious companies, the first thing they think about is the safety of the citizens and potential buyers who come to visit the project and the creation of safe conditions for workers,” said Ainura Sagyn, the chairwoman of the International Builders’ Association of Kyrgyzstan, a trade group representing many of the country’s largest construction firms, including Avangard Style.
“In relation to what is prescribed by law, they do it all,” she said in an interview with Eurasianet. “The big companies are fully, thoroughly providing [safety] equipment. No one is skimping on that.”
The scope of construction in Bishkek is impressive. In 2024, Bishkek added 65 million square feet of real estate, twice as much as a few years ago, Economist.kg, a financial news site, reported.
On February 8, a construction worker in his early forties fell to his death from the eighth story of a building on Bishkek’s southeast side just a week after another worker in his early fifties fell from a construction site and died in the same district.
Two months earlier, on the evening of November 27, 2024, an 18-year-old construction worker fell from an apartment tower and died, again on the southeast side.
A few months prior to that incident, downtown this time, a worker fell to his death from the upper floors of another apartment block under construction – this one, local media Vesti reported, was being built illegally.
Construction is booming in Bishkek. Massive apartment towers – and in the south of the city, whole new neighborhoods – have sprouted on practically every available plot of land amid steady economic growth and heavy investment by the President Sadyr Japarov’s government in housing and infrastructure.
But the steady drumbeat of construction deaths in the headlines highlights a tragic side effect of a building boom that has won the government much praise.
Numbers released by the State Committee for National Security showed that the most common cause of serious injury on sites – falls – has soared in Kyrgyzstan from 11 cases in 2022 to 73 cases in 2023 and 172 cases in 2024. In the first three months of this year, there were more than 30 cases, according to the committee’s figures.
“The construction sector is the most dangerous,” said Usen Nurmanbetov, deputy chair of the Professional Construction Workers Union of Kyrgyzstan.
The State Committee for National Security has taken notice. A statement issued by the government agency lays the blame for the injuries and deaths squarely on “inadequate” safety measures, negligence and corruption by government safety inspectors and construction companies.
In the statement, the committee also accuses companies of buying off injured or dead workers’ relatives to avoid legal claims and says safety inspectors have “colluded” with companies to let them start construction without fulfilling safety requirements.
In the spring, security services agents arrested Tilek Kadykeev, head of the agency that conducts construction inspections, and Ernis Minkeev, the general director of Avangard Style, one of the country’s biggest construction companies, in connection with a construction accident in May. Both were released to house arrest a few days after they were taken into custody.
“It’s a very important signal to the construction sector,” said Eldiyar Karachalov, a former construction union official and labor law expert. “It means that the government is starting to take safety and responsibility for violations very seriously.”
Avangard did not comment in the local press on the arrest at the time.
Representatives of the construction industry say construction safety has greatly improved in the past few years, and the rise in accidents is because the number of sites and workers on them has exploded.
“Conscientious companies, the first thing they think about is the safety of the citizens and potential buyers who come to visit the project and the creation of safe conditions for workers,” said Ainura Sagyn, the chairwoman of the International Builders’ Association of Kyrgyzstan, a trade group representing many of the country’s largest construction firms, including Avangard Style.
“In relation to what is prescribed by law, they do it all,” she said in an interview with Eurasianet. “The big companies are fully, thoroughly providing [safety] equipment. No one is skimping on that.”
The scope of construction in Bishkek is impressive. In 2024, Bishkek added 65 million square feet of real estate, twice as much as a few years ago, Economist.kg, a financial news site, reported.
The building boom started gaining traction around 2008, fueled by labor migrant remittances from Russia and pro-growth policy under successive governments. It was supercharged by а government building program operated by the State Mortgage Company, which Japarov reformed in 2022, Sagyn said.
“Thanks to our leadership, what’s going on right now is support for many entrepreneurs, and not just in the construction sector,” she said.
The company has financed the construction of 737 apartment blocks with more than 61,800 apartments across the country through its current program, the state Kabar news agency reported in March.
The country’s housing deficit is frequently cited at around 320 million square feet.
None of his members have any trouble finding work now, said Nurmanbetov, the union official.
But rapid growth has pushed construction companies to recruit many younger workers with little experience, and different stages of a project are often completed by separate teams of workers, which requires frequent safety training, he said.
Nurmanbetov blames four-fifths of accidents on workers who don’t follow safety rules so they can move to the next job more quickly and a fifth on negligent companies rushing to meet deadlines on the cheap.
All across Bishkek construction workers can be seen in sandals without hardhats working late into the night on dark sites where anti-fall safety nets are installed haphazardly.
The growth has also strained the resources of government inspectors who have stepped up safety monitoring after moratoriums on many inspections of private industry, meant to spur growth, expired this year, Karachalov, the labor expert, said.
“Business felt that … under those conditions it was possible to turn a blind eye to certain violations,” he told Eurasianet.
However, new labor code regulations introduced by Japarov’s government last month reduced the compensation companies must pay out to workers seriously injured on the job from 10 years’ salary to seven years’ salary and cut the compensation for families of those who die from their injuries from 20 years’ salary to 12 years’ salary, a decision Karachalov called “a pity.”
“At the same time we’re seeing the strengthening of inspections at construction sites, we’re seeing a reduction in financial penalties,” Karachalov said. “Perhaps the authorities are looking for balance.”
Alexander Thompson is a journalist based in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, reporting on current events across Central Asia. He previously worked for American newspapers, including the Charleston, S.C., Post and Courier and The Boston Globe.
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