Öskemen cityscape (Photo: Andriej Szypiłow/CC BY-SA 3.0)

KAZAKHSTAN: Sole bidder BKM Holding of Belarus has been awarded a contract to supply trams to Öskemen.

The order covers four partly low-floor AKSM-62103 four-axle vehicles costing 182·5m tenge each, with delivery scheduled by December 6.

The manufacturer said the vehicles would be built to a high specification, with air-conditioning, CCTV and chargers for mobile devices. They will be supplied in the city’s navy blue and white livery.

Öskemen, known as Ust-Kamenogorsk in Russian, currently operates Type 71-605 trams supplied by Ust-Katav dating from around 1980, as well as Tatra KT-4D trams which were built for Berlin in 1983-85 and acquired by Almaty in 2013 before being sold to Öskemen in 2018 after the Almaty tram network closed.