A Government Decree dated September 6 allocated 896,772,000 Armenian drams to the provincial region of Tavush for development programs in their communities.

Three programs are being implemented in the city of Noyemberyan using government funding.  Noyemberyan mayor Seryozha Amiraghyan was happy that the border city was seeing significant work done thanks to the state budget allocation. 

The city’s football stadium will be rebuilt through one of the programs.  A building 27 meters long and 6 meters wide will be erected next to the stadium to house locker rooms and two small gymnasiums.  The third floor of the building will have a high ceiling and an unimpeded view of the football field below, like a balcony from where spectators can watch the matches.  The field will be lengthened by 6 meters in order to meet the international specifications set out for football fields.  There will also be a new retaining wall constructed.  The allocation for this purpose was 50 million drams, and the Ijevan construction cooperative company Hayk and Sons won the construction tender for 48 million drams.  Construction work is set to be completed within the current year.

21.1 million drams have been allocated from the state budget for the renovation of the roofs of four apartment buildings.  The four oldest buildings were chosen from among 19 in the city.  The old asbestos on the roofs of three of the buildings has been replaced by new zinc-lined aluminum; renovation of the fourth roof is still in progress.  The work is being done by the same cooperative company, Hayk and Sons.  The mayor of Noyemberyan said that very little of the old asbestos on those buildings was still fit for use and any such pieces found have been given to needy residents on the top floors of the remaining buildings.  Some of this old asbestos was also allocated to the administrative building of the municipality.

The third program implemented in the city has been the renovation of the road to the cemetery.  Work on this project is being conducted by Levon the Second ltd., a company with great experience in the field of road construction.  23 million drams has been allocated for this work.  350-400 meters of road have been completely covered with asphalt, and potholes have been filled on the rest of the road - around 3 kilometers stretching from the city center to the cemetery.  Renovation work is already complete, but the plan also includes building road borders. Work has been held up by persistent rains.

“How was it decided to include, for example, the reconstruction of the stadium in the program?” we asked Mayor Amiraghyan.  He replied that Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan had visited the border village of Koti on August 5.  After completing the visit, the Prime Minister was supposed to fly to Yerevan by helicopter from the Noyemberyan stadium.  “That was when I requested an allocation of 50 million drams for the renovation of the city stadium,” explained Seryozha Amiraghyan.  According to him, they had had a larger program in the past to beautify the area surrounding the stadium as well.  But that required a larger budget and was not realistic in current conditions.  “Does the community council know of and approve the fact that these are the programs that have been implemented using state budget funds, rather than something else?” we asked, to which the mayor replied that the importance of these programs had been discussed on numerous occasions during council sessions and the members of the council were aware, although there had been no need to present these projects to them for their approval.

Seryozha Amiraghyan was satisfied with the quality of the work done - the roofs of three of the buildings had been completed on time, though there had been delays in work at the stadium due to rain, since it was not possible to do foundation work in such conditions.  The mayor was concerned that construction work on the stadium may not be completed in the planned time.

Our interviews with residents on the city streets showed that the locals approved of the renovation of the cemetery road and the building of roofs as part of the program using state budget allocations.  The construction team declared work on the roof of Building 2 on Zoravar Andranik Street to be complete last week.

The ceiling of resident Gagik Gishyan’s third-floor apartment in that building had been damaged in different places during the construction work.  Gagik’s wife Zarine told us how the builders who were working on the roof left after doing the damage to their ceiling as part of the renovation effort.  It had rained heavily during that night and water had filled the apartment.  The situation was similar in their neighbor’s, Marine Amiraghyan’s apartment.  Rainwater had also penetrated to the apartment on the second floor.  However, the owner of the apartment, Artik Abovyan, pointed out to us the rainwater flowing from the front of the building, which is located centrally on a street intersection.  The construction team had not changed the old drainage system after renovating the roof and had not even taken the trouble to connect the pipe to the drainage point on the roof so that the water could flow away.

The situation was pitiful at the city stadium as well.  Huge mounds of soil could be seen through the thick autumn mist at the stadium and there were piled blocks of tuff, which barely hinted that someday there might be construction done there.  Only an incurable optimist would believe that work would be complete by the end of the year there when it has not even begun yet.

It was also notable that most of the work on the buildings was being done by residents of Noyemberyan, rather than workers from Ijevan’s Hayk and Sons.  The construction crews included tilers and also the residents of the buildings being renovated.  For example, two of the people working on the rain-drenched roof included a 60-year old man with health problems and a kiosk salesman.  Upon seeing them I thought that they had gone up the roof of their four-floor building out of a “sense of camaraderie”, in order to lend a hand to the workers.  But it turned out that they were working for a daily wage.

Construction tenders conducted by the State Procurement Agency give cause for suspicion.   It cannot be a coincidence that two of these programs are being implemented by the same company from Ijevan.  Even more so given that Noyemberyan is separated from Ijevan by land lying on the border with Azerbaijan over a distance of 70 kilometers, which would make the transportation of construction material and laborers difficult, and add accommodation expenses.  Most of the construction work was being done by locals, as noted earlier.  In general, these state budget allocations have been delayed and it is difficult to start construction work right before winter.

During our interviews in Noyemberyan, a salesperson working in a kiosk had the following to say about the programs implemented: the presidential elections are coming up.  The interviewee declined to be mentioned by name, “Are you serious? They would close down my kiosk in an instant.”

Voskan Sargsyan