President meets with the public of E Kazakhstan region
Addressing the participants, the Head of State told about the major indicators of the region's socio-economic development.
According to him, the region's industrial output rose by 9.3% in 2018. In 2015-2018, under the industrialization programme, the region implemented 19 projects and created 3,500 new jobs. "East Kazakhstan region demonstrates good paces of development both in economy and in social sector," he said.
The President touched upon the issues raising concern of the population, in particular, unemployment reduction. "The number of jobs created, salary rate and working conditions shall be the main criteria of assessment of the regional governors' work," said Tokayev and commissioned the administration of the East Kazakhstan region to work more efficiently in this area.
Another issue of the agenda was creation of favorable conditions for business development.
"East Kazakhstan region has a number of large industrial enterprises. We should more actively use their potential for boosting cooperation with small and medium businesses," he noted.
Improving people's wellbeing must be a priority, he stressed.
"Slightly more than half of 710 rural settlements have been provided with centralized water supply system to date. As per the Regions' Development Programme, 80% of villages must have been provided with drinking water by 2020," the Head of State noted.
One more task set to the East Kazakhstan's administration was to develop tourism infrastructure.
"Tourism industry is a key driver of economic growth and an area of creation of new jobs. The coastal area of Alakol Lake was included in the governmental programme of tourism development as a destination which may attract more than 2mn tourists every year. Many Kazakhstanis spent their vacations on the Alakol Lake last year, but were disappointed in low level of service and poor condition of local roads. I commission the governors of Almaty and East Kazakhstan region to tackle the problem of roads repair and service improvement as soon as possible," he said. 
The President commissioned also the Government, the governor of East Kazakhstan to launch a package of measures to settle the ecological problems of the region together with NGOs and respective authorities.
Representatives of civil society, youth, teachers, doctors and entrepreneurs took the floor during the meeting.
