It makes no sense for me to be sitting behind a desk at the office all day. I’m at the office only when needed. I live in Vanadzor. They can telephone me on matters that need my attention.
After a ten year absence, the villagers of the Shnogh village in Armenia’s Lori province heralded the return of celebrations marking the community’s namesake holiday.
In the northern Armenian town of Alaverdi, there are more than 600 patients registered at the ocal hospital’s ONCO (oncology) clinic. 47 year-old Anzhela Avagyan, who suffers from advanced breast cancer, is one of them.
Kids attending school in the area have to hold their noses and tiptoe through the stinking mess. Residents of nearby apartments don’t even approach the bins to discard their garbage bags, preferring to throw the bags in the general direction of the bins from a safe distance.
At the end of the trial proceeding, Hasmik Sharbatyan, sister of the slain attorney, began to cry out loud and approached the accused shouting, “You tortured him, the three of you. They couldn’t recognize his face. I’ll pluck your eyes out Diloyan.”
The debts at the Akhtala Mountain Enrichment Combinat, a mining company in Armenia’s northern Lori Province, continue to grow.
Toxic fumes have been billowing from the two smokestacks at the Alaverdi Copper-Molybdenum Plant run by the Armenian Copper Programme for the past few days.
Early this morning, residents of the villages of Shnogh and Teghout blockaded the road leading to the offices of Teghout Ltd.
Young residents of the villages of Teghout and Shnogh began blocking the road to the Teghout mine this morning at 5.
The Drmbon copper mine, an underground operation, was launched in 2002. It annually produces 350,000 tons of ore per year. Artour Mkrtoumyan, General Director of Base Metals, says that the mine has reserves for another two or two and a half years only.
The national government of Armenia had gone ahead an allocated 300 million AMD from the reserve fund for the capital renovation of several streets in the northern Armenian town of Vanadzor.
The minister retorted that her deputy would never write such a thing, to which the mayor shot back, “I can show you a copy of his letter.”
A criminal case looking into charges that a former mayor of the village of Shnogh ripped off taxpayers has languished in the investigations unit of the Alaverdi Police Department for the past six months.
In yet another case of an Armenian official overstepping his legal bounds and selling off land registered as a “historical-cultural monument”, Alaverdi Mayor Artavazd Varosyan has allowed for a 150 square meter parcel surrounding a monument built in 1970 dedicated to the 50th anniversary of Soviet Armenia to be sold to a developer for 165,000 AMD ($400) for the construction of a children’s cafe.
Eleven large Mercedes buses lined up at the check point from 11 am to 11 pm. The buses were headed to Moscow, Donetsk, Rostov, Krasnodar and points further afield in Russia.
Davit Antaranyan, a lifelong angler, says that there’s a premeditated plot to destroy the fish in the Debed River.
It turns out that a number of residents along Sarahart Street in Alaverdi have been getting sewage water flowing from their faucets for the past two months.
While the RA Ministry of Agriculture puts the May 25 hailstorm damage suffered by the fields of the Lori Agarak and Ledjan communities at 40%, local residents estimate that the figure is closer to 70-80%.
Two large buses are parked outside the Alaverdi Court House. There were around 100 young people milling about. Suitcases and parcels at their feet.
Haygaz Khachikyan, mayor of the northern Armenian town of Akhtala, says he warned provincial authorities about the growing environmental dangers his community faces caused by the tailings dams owned by the Akhtala Enrichment Plant
Yesterday, Armenia’s Greens Union President Hakob Sanasaryan led a group of environmentalists on a visit to the town of Akhtala to inspect the Shamlough open pit mine operated by Metals Prince Ltd.
Despite the fact that Hetq sources at the Akhtala Mine Enrichment Plant state that Metal Prince Ltd., the plant owners, recently received $800,000 in lieu of purchases, workers have been waiting 21 days for their wages.
Groups of students, after buying their flowers, were seen dashing to the Genocide Memorial in the center of town with their colourful offerings.
Renovations to the 6th century Odzoun Church appear to have failed due to disagreements amongst those responsible. Father Vrtanes Baghalyan told Hetq that the Armenian government had allocated 20 million AMD ($50,000) for renovations in 2010 based on a request filed by Catholicos Garegin II.
A section of the pipeline carrying exhaust fumes at the Alaverdi Copper-Molybdenum Plant collapsed today, spewing toxic smoke over the town in northern Armenia. Usually, the fumes at the plant owned by the Armenian Copper Programme, a subsidiary of the Vallex Group, are channeled into the giant smokestack and from there into the atmosphere above the town.
Two year-old Milena Tiratsvyan was diagnosed with leukemia seven months ago and is currently being treated at Yerevan's R. H. Yolyan Hematology Center. The family is in no financial position to pay for the medical treatment that little Milena requires.
A worker was killed on March 22 at the Teghout Enrichment Plant when the crane basket he was in plummeted 34 meters to the ground.
Two year-old Milena Tiratsvyan was diagnosed with leukemia seven months ago. Karen, the young girl’s father, said that Milena was sent from the Alaverdi Hospital to the Arabkir Hospital in Yerevan for treatment.
246 of the 265 workers at the Alaverdi Copper Smelter taking part in an October 2012 medical study were diagnosed as having an elevated range of cardio-vascular and respiratory illnesses.
None of the opposition candidates have certified representatives at the three polling stations in the Lori village of Otzoun. Neither are there any outside election monitors on site.
The men said that they play cards seven months out of the year and “clean the doors of the Russians” for the other five.
When we visited the site, we saw what they meant. When we approached the confluence of the Getak and Debed rivers, a plant worker manning the pumping station tried to prevent us from taking pictures of the waste flow.
When dental nurse Silva Papoyan opened the door to the Alaverdi clinic this morning where she works, she knew the place had been burgled. The place was a mess, the latest victim of a spate of robberies that has hit the area.
The absurdity in all this is that on January 10, the Vanadzor Municipality’s website boasted: “We are continuing the difficult snow removal work.” Oh really? Perhaps the municipality’s snow removals crews got lost somewhere on the way to the job.
Some residents of Haghbat village called Hetq yesterday. They were concerned that some large clay vessels unearthed at the nearby Alaverdi cemetery had wound up on the grounds of the Atorik restaurant.
People have been dumping trash alongside the road to the village of Haghpat, in Lori Marz, for years. The small river that runs through the dale is awash in garbage and no one seems to mind.
“Katnaghbyur has become an old-aged home. Young people leave for Russia and any foreign shores for work,” said Rafayel Hovhannisyan, a young community resident.
Based on the revelations appearing in a December 4 Hetq article, the Lori Public Prosecutor has filed criminal charges against the former Shnogh Village Mayor Haykaz Kochinyan for suspicious financial dealings while in office.
It has now come to light that former Shnogh Village Mayor Haykaz Kochinyan was paying 1.2 million AMD ($3,000) every year from 2007 to 2011 out of the community budget in gas expenses for a car that didn't run and that was parked in the mayor’s outside garage for the years in question.
Yesterday, 700 saplings were planted atop the one hectare of land that now serves as the Nazik tailings dam belonging to the Akhtala Enrichment Combine.
School enrollment in Jiliza decreases from year to year. There are no first, second, third or sixth grades. “There was one child scheduled for enrollment in the first grade, but the family moved away,” says Mayor Vardanyan.
Forests in the strategic border region of Jiliza, Lori Marz, again fell prey to the chopping axe yesterday. 15,000 hectares of the forest is under the “protection” of the HayAntar Jiliza Forestry Division, while another 4,000 is under the administrative care of the Lalvar Forestry Division.
Grigor Hakobyan, Chief of the Agricultural and Environmental Department at the Lori Regional Authority, told Hetq that only 6,000 hectares of the 42,000 registered as “arable land” has received a fall planting of wheat.
One month after Hetq reported that toxic tailings from the Akhtala Mining Enrichment Combine’s Tchotchkan tailing dam were freely flowing into the Akhtala River, nothing has been done either by the state government or the company to halt the lethal discharge.
When we spoke top Mayor Titanyan, he mentioned several underlying reasons why so much land is not being cultivated. First off, there are some 1,000 residents who have left and their plots remain fallow.
Heriknaz Mkrtchyan, the environmental expert, now says that the hydro-plants planned for the Svedi River will damage the area’s eco-diversity.
In an Armenian version of a town hall meeting, Lori Regional Administrator Artour Nalbandyan met with 32 local residents yesterday, most of whom presented requests and petitions dealing with employment, health and other social matters.
The effluents were being carried from a pipe directly from the Akhtala mining enrichment plant that is owned by Serob Der-Boghossian; the diaspora Armenian businessman now serving jail time for paedophilia.
16 year-old Artak Grigoryan hadn’t spoken a word in his life until quite recently. He’s never attended school in his native village of Akori, Lori Province. It seems that Artak’s cleft deformity, a treatable congenital pathology, has held him back from living a normal childhood.