By looking at this photo, one would hardly imagine that this houses the community municipality and that local self government decisions in the name of the Republic of Armenia are adopted here.  After I first spotted this iron-clad hut, located in the middle of the Andarut village in Aragatzotn, it occurred to me that maybe one of the community’s poorer families called the place home, especially since there was no flag hoisted on the building nor it have any sign on the outside as to its function. Local villages joke that their municipal office is in a miserable state, just as they are.

Andarut is located a few kilometers north of Byurakan and up till 1991 was part of that community. However, for the past 18 years it has been cut off and all municipal services have remained behind in Byurakan. Not only does the village lack a municipal building, but there is no medical clinic or kindergarten. Heaven forbid if a local resident dared to get sick. They would have to be taken to the clinic in Byurakan some four kilometers away. Otherwise, the patient would have to wait till Thursday when a nurse from Byurakan comes to the village and makes her rounds.

Villagers refuse medical check-ups

Even though the nurse sets up shop to receive new patients once a week in the village, no one from Antarut ever bothers to show up. The reason they don’t go for medical check-ups is because they have no health issues. The doctor sees the patients in the iron framed building that passes as the municipality. But none of the sick will allow themselves to be examined in a room where both the doctor and mayor sits, in addition to other staff members. Here, the term “medical exam” is quite a relative concept. In the best of conditions, the visiting physician may check the patient’s pressure, heart and lung functions and prescribe some drugs. The doctor can do no more since the only equipment he brings along is a stethoscope. Rouzanna Haroutyunyan, Director of the Byurakan ambulatory clinic, confessed that no one from the village shows up on the days that the doctor is in town. “You know, I understand what the concerns of the villagers are. That isn’t a clinic but a municipal office.” She said in the beginning the patients would gather in one of their neighbor’s homes but that the owner broke off the agreement because he no longer wanted his place to be converted into a health clinic. “I petitioned the community mayor on several occasions to allocate one room for the patients but he hasn’t responded,” added Ms. Haroutyunyan. Antarut Mayor Samvel Hovhannisyan said that the municipality just doesn’t have the resources to build a clinic. “I even don’t have the luxury of thinking about the municipality building itself. I’m more interested in bringing in gas to the village.”

No funds to supply village with gas

Antarut, with a population of 273, is a village with a long laundry list of problems. In fact the expressions, “there isn’t” and “we don’t have” roll off the tongues of local residents quite easily. Antarut has no irrigation water and so the villagers don’t bother working the fields they own. “The village has no irrigation water and folks use the snow melt and rain water. They only irrigate the fields up till July. Then they wait for the rainy season. If we had irrigation water coming in that would really allow us to cultivate large tracts of land that go fallow. At least the villagers would earn 60-70% of their yearly budget,” noted Mayor Hovhannisyan. Antarut has 221 hectares of land of which 50 hectares are privatized. These fields are mostly used to grow fodder grass since there’s no irrigation water. Fields located closer to the homes are mostly cultivated but grazing land is scarce. Thus, animal husbandry is slowly vanishing as a livelihood since the villagers can’t afford to buy grass during the winter and there is no place to keep the animals during the summer. When it comes to the question of supplying the village with natural gas, it would appear that the government has washed its hands of the matter as well and pulled out. Some 550 meters of gas pipe has been laid by the village itself but the funds have dried up and so has the work to complete the project. “We’ve petitioned Minister of Territorial Affairs Armen Gevorgyan for assistance but haven’t heard back from him yet. I really don’t know what to expect. If we got another 500 meters of pipe then I could say that 50% of the village’s gas problem had been solved. It would be a great boost for the village.  Without government assistance, we’d be forced to tackle the job on our own but we just don’t have the resources to finish it,” stated Mayor Hovhannisyan.