The words were unusually direct for a cabinet transcript. Addressing Samruk-Energo chair Kairat Maksutov, Bektenov said last week’s ministerial inspection found the situation at CHP-3 unsatisfactory and the pace of work very low: finish by the end of the year or the question of your personal responsibility will be considered, and take it under daily control. He reminded the energy ministry and the Samruk-Kazyna fund of the same responsibility for the Almaty stations and the combined-cycle unit in Turkestan region.
The project behind the threat is Almaty’s conversion of its coal-fired CHP-2 and CHP-3 to gas, the city’s main air-quality and heat-security program. The energy ministry has flagged the schedule since January, blaming the general contractor’s weak organization, and by the ministry’s account the CHP-3 works stand at 26% complete in mid-July, and the minister has publicly ruled out any shift of the deadline. The stations sit inside a 2026 national plan of about 2.66 gigawatts of new capacity.
The pattern is what elevates a scolding into a story. In June, Bektenov issued the same personal-responsibility warning to Talgat Aldybergenov over slipping transit-freight plans at KTZ; Aldybergenov is now described in the Kazakh press as the railway company’s former head, and the premier told Tuesday’s meeting the railway’s work remains weak. A head of government is running an accountability campaign across the infrastructure state, one delayed project at a time.
A 26%-complete heat plant in July, in a city of 2 million with a continental winter, is a countdown.
The campaign collides with arithmetic this desk has tracked all month. The grid is the binding constraint on everything Astana has promised, the NVIDIA-scale data campuses first among them, and the 2.66 gigawatts of new capacity promised for 2026 in the same report is the measure of how hard the grid is chasing demand. A 26%-complete heat plant in July is not a bureaucratic embarrassment; in a city of 2 million with a continental winter, it is a countdown.
Watch three things: whether Maksutov keeps his job past the heating season’s first cold week; whether the year-end deadline is met or quietly redefined as one unit’s launch; and whether the personal-responsibility method actually moves concrete and steel faster than the contractor problems the ministry itself has documented since January. Kazakhstan’s infrastructure state is being managed by ultimatum, and the winter will grade the method.