Armen Parsadanyan, who heads the Sustainable Development NGO in the southern Armenian town of Kapan, told Hetq that he has been receiving irate phone calls from employees of various businesses in the area claiming that employers are going ahead with making withdrawals from their wages intended for transference to the new mandatory pension system.

The withdrawals are being made despite the fact that Armenia’s Constitutional Court has postponed such withdrawals until it reviews the legaility of several points in the pension system law.

Parsadanyan says many of the complaints have come from workers at the Zangezour Copper-Molybdenum Plant.

What has angered workers is the fact that despite promises made by plant executive director Maxim Hakobyan   that the company would raise wages to offset the pension withdrawals. No such raises have been enacted.

Parsadanyan told Hetq that local attorneys are now reviewing the possibility of taking certain business to court on the matter.