The village of Dasht in Armavir Marz has a community cultural center but it appears to exist in name only.

Under the buildings crumbling roof, a visitor to Dasht will find the mayor’s office, a library and medical out-patient clinic, but no cultural center.

The mayor’s office takes up two small rooms – one serves as the office and the other is where you’ll find the 8 municipal employees of Dasht.

The librarian is also there since part of the library has been allocated for the clinic. You can’t even fit a small desk in the truncated library.

The eight municipal employees are crammed into such a small room that they have to take turns sitting down or must greet residents in the outside hallway.

The 5 member village council doesn’t even have a room to call its own.

Council Secretary Haroutyun Mouradyan told Hetq that a room had been allocated but that it’s unusable due to a leaking ceiling. There are just a few broken chairs in the dank and clammy room.

You’ll find none of the decisions passed by the mayor or the council in the municipal office itself; a violation of the law. Local residents also will not find any public notices regarding the community’s budget – how much money Dasht has in its coffers and where it is being spent.

Secretary Mouradyan told us that old council notices had merely been taken down to make way for new ones. Residents, however, assured us that council notices were never posted as required.

Dasht is a rural community with a population of 1,000, mostly engaged in agriculture. One-third of the community’s 150 hectares of arable land goes uncultivated, however.

It seems that the water pumps for irrigation haven’t been working for the past few years.

Council Secretary Mouradyan also pointed to the lack of quality seed as a reason why so much land remains unplanted.

To back up his argument, Mouradyan told us that he had planted 4,000 square meters of tomato crop and only harvested 10 tons of crop when 30 tons is the normal minimum.

“After all that expense and effort, there’s no profit in the end. That’s why the young generation doesn’t bother working the land,” he said.

Mouradyan added that the village has only one tractor, which is on its last legs, for plowing.

He also noted the high cost of fertilizer as another problem.

“The state of agriculture in Armenia can be described as primitive at best,” he said.

In the 20 years since Armenia declared its independence, 100 residents have left Dasht. Most have settled in Russia but remain registered as Dasht residents.

This year alone, 30 young men from Dasht who were called up for military service remain listed as AWOL.

They too have left the country.