Senate issues parliamentary inquiry to Ministry of Construction over systemic failures

Presenting the upper house's findings, Senator Zumrad Bekatova stated that despite recent state reforms and a series of newly adopted legal frameworks, the construction sector continues to suffer from systemic problems. These include the massive misappropriation of public funds, poor workmanship, and widespread non-compliance with regulatory standards. According to Bekatova, the analytical data indicates that the current anti-corruption measures within the ministry are failing to deliver meaningful results.

Bilateral investigations covering the 2024–2025 period revealed 236 corruption-related crimes implicating 284 individuals within the sector. The most frequent violations included abuse of official authority with 72 recorded cases, service forgery with 71 cases, and the theft of state budgetary funds with 46 cases.

Financial negligence in project development caused extensive damage to the state treasury, totaling UZS 391.2 billion in 2025 alone, which led to the launching of 474 criminal cases. While this shows a slight decrease from the UZS 419.4 billion in damages recorded in 2024, lawmakers emphasized that the scale of financial loss remains dangerously high. Geographically, the capital city of Tashkent accounted for the highest share of embezzled funds at UZS 42.9 billion, followed by Bukhara region at UZS 35.3 billion and Jizzakh region at UZS 24.4 billion.

The inquiry also highlighted severe structural quality deficiencies. In 2025, supervisors detected 1,601 instances of substandard construction work, valued at UZS 29 billion, compared to UZS 63 billion the previous year. Furthermore, auditors discovered 506 cases where construction and installation works were completely fabricated on paper to misappropriate state funds through padded accounting. These non–existent works totaled UZS 25 billion in 2025, down from UZS 83 billion across 389 cases in 2024.

Beyond financial crimes, the Senate raised alarms over obsolete building codes. Although a 2022 Cabinet of Ministers decree dictates that urban planning regulations must be updated every three–to–four years, and national law requires technical regulations to be revised at least once every five years, the ministry has neglected these timelines. Nineteen active urban building codes and regulations have not been updated for over 20 years. Senator Bekatova warned that buildings put into operation under these outdated rules risk becoming future hazards for citizens, blaming a weak state inspection system that relies too heavily on human bias.

Workplace safety metrics presented during the session were equally grim, revealing that 40 percent of all documented construction accidents in 2025 resulted in worker fatalities. The leading causes of these fatal incidents were safety violations while working at heights, accounting for 52 percent of cases, followed by the use of defective machinery or lack of personal protective equipment at 15 percent, worker carelessness at 7 percent, and other labor code violations.

The parliamentary inquiry also reprimanded the ministry for its poor public accountability. By December 1, 2025, the President’s Virtual and People’s Receptions had registered 13.8 thousand citizen complaints regarding the construction ministry's operations. Of these, only 18% were resolved successfully. This low resolution rate has triggered growing public dissatisfaction and a surge in repeat complaints, which reached 1,358 cases due to superficial handling by ministry personnel.