The fields were deserted on our afternoon visit to Mayisyan, a village of some 1,500 in Armenia’s Armavir Province.

Only the sound of a distant tractor could be heard. The dust it kicked up made it hard to see who was behind the wheel.

The tractor came closer, and a boy jumped down from the driver’s seat. It was Senik, a 13-year-old boy. His face was sweaty and covered in grime.

The boy started to learn how to drive a tractor last year and now helps in the fields after school. Garik Sahakyan, a neighbor, taught him how to handle the tractor.

Senik lives with his mother, Julieta Martirosyan and three siblings in a dilapidated building that once housed the village kindergarten.

Senik and Sevan

Senik, and his twin brother Sevak, are in the same class and have a god attendance record. School Principal Anna Sarukhanyan says the boys are diligent and responsible, adding that Senik is always willing to take part in the school's public activities.

"Now I can drive the tractor," says Senik.

Mr. Sahakyan says that Senik asked him for lessons. The two are inseparable.

"I buy whatever he needs, be it clothes, shoes, school supplies. I love Seno like my own children. I see that he does not go down a bad path,” says Mr. Sahakyan.

Senik's parents are divorced. They first lived in the house of their maternal grandmother in the same village. It proved to be too small, so Senik's mother asked the mayor to provide them a temporary apartment at the former kindergarten building. Mrs. Martirosyan and her four kids have been living there for the past three years.

Julieta Martirosyan

They’ve gone without running water and electricity since. The kids are in bed by eight during the cold and dark winter months.

“My children haven’t watched TV for three years. Sometimes, they go to my mother's house, watch TV and return. They learn their lesson by candlelight,” says Mrs. Martirosyan.

The family doesn’t have the money to pay the utility deposits needed.

Mrs. Martirosyan says the monthly 50,000-dram government stipend is spent on food. She works in the fields as a day laborer, earning extra cash when possible.

She complains that the apartment is full of scorpions during the summer, saying she uses her telephone light to spot and kill the nasty invaders.

The family is forced to carry buckets of water from a neighbors’ house. Their kitchen and bathroom are separated by a plastic sheet. The windows are broken in places, the holes sheathed in plastic. 

Mrs. Martirosyan says teachers at the school and family relatives assist the children with clothes and shoes. The municipality allocates 15-20,000 drams once a year.

"My children need everything, but most of all clothes and shoes. I just can’t manage. Having electricity would be nice. I dream of it,” she says.

Mayisyan Mayor Yesayi Movsisyan says he can’t do anything more for the family.

“We gave them a temporary place to live. That building is slated for reconstruction. They’ll have to leave,” says Movsisyan, adding that the municipality can’t afford to hand the family cash every month.

"Every year the municipality helps out, fifteen or twenty thousand. I can't give them money every month. She must go to the electricity utility and apply to become a subscriber. That costs more than fifty thousand,” Movsisyan says.

Senik on tractor. Metzamor plant in background

While Movsisyan argues that the municipal coffers are empty and can’t cough up the 50,000 drams needed to get electricity for Mrs. Martirosyan and her four children, it turns out that the local municipal council regularly pays “special attention” to the mayor’s family, selling them communal land on the cheap and even granting them social assistance.  

On January 12, 2020, the council approved the allocation of 50,000 drams to Mayor Movsisyan’s wife Ruzanna Mkrtchyan and her sister Diana. On April 10, the council approved 40,000 in social assistance to Movsisyan’s in-law Sergey Harutyunyan.

When questioned by Hetq, Mayor Movsisyan exclaimed, “It was Ruzanna Mkrtchyan’s sixteenth birthday. What’s the big deal?”