“When someone doesn’t do something that he has promised to do, how do our people generally consider that person?…the people have a nice saying for that, but I don’t want to say it now,” said president of the Republic of Armenia Robert Kocharyan about some oppositionists during a meeting with students of the Yerevan State University.
Yesterday marked the 17th anniversary of the 1988 earthquake. Robert Kocharyan first promised in 2001, then in 2002, then 2003 that he would reconstruct the earthquake zone, but he has not fulfilled his promise to this day and there are still many families with no homes in Gyumri.
Until that is done, president of Armenia Robert Kocharyan visited Gyumri for the 17th anniversary of the earthquake in Gyumri and he placed bouquets of flowers near the monument dedicated to the victims of the earthquake. In general, many deputy officials have been discussing the issue concerning the earthquake zone. They remembered the families left without homes due to the 1988 earthquake even in 1998, then in 2003 during the presidential elections when the reconstruction of the earthquake zone became one of the key promises made by President Robert Kocharyan during his pre-election campaign.
During the 1998 presidential elections, Robert Kocharyan had promised to complete reconstruction of the earthquake zone throughout the course of 1998-2001. On that occasion, the “1998-2001 major reconstruction project of the earthquake zone” was planned out; however, it failed due to some objective and subjective reasons. The last deadline for the reconstruction was announced by Robert Kocharyan in 2003. The “2001-2003 earthquake zone reconstruction project” became legal by the National Assembly too. Two years have passed since the deadline, but there are still some problems.
So, what was done in order to reconstruct the earthquake zone and in general getting Gyumri back on its feet during the past 17 years?
As a result of the terrible earthquake in 1988, 30,298 homes measuring 3677 square meters in total were destroyed in the Shirak Marz. Despite the fact that Armenia was in a social/economic crisis and the Karabagh war was going on, the former Armenian authorities considered the reconstruction of the destroyed homes as a priority, basically reconstructing the number of homes that were destroyed during the earthquake. However, during the years that Levon Ter-Petrosyan was president, the authorities only managed to reconstruct 9410 homes with a 1525.6 thousand square meters surface area, which formed 31% of the homes lost in the earthquake and nearly 41% of the residential surface area.
After the change of power in 1998, however, there was not much work being done. During these past years, there was a lessening of home construction and there were 10,000 less families without homes-of course, for no apparent reasons. Then came 1999, when the former Prime Minister of Armenia Armen Darbinyan’s (originally from Gyumri) N 32 resolution was made on June 10 of that year. According to that resolution, the families left without homes as a result of the earthquake would not receive homes not based on numbers, but rather as much as they had lost during the 1988 earthquake. The “reconstruction” of the earthquake zone continued just like that.
The reconstruction of the earthquake zone did not go too well during the years of 1998-2000. The scheduled construction work was not carried out due to several reasons-the constructors could not fit in with the schedule and the incomplete buildings kept on being handed over to others for stores and restaurants. It was scheduled to reconstruct 16,040 homes in the Shirak Marz during the years of 1998-2001. However, only half of the foreseen number-1292 homes-were reconstructed. As a result of this, once again 14,750 families were left without homes.
Reconstruction of the earthquake zone was more active in 2001 when Armenian American benefactor Kirk Krikoryan granted Armenia 155 million dollars from the “Linsie” foundation, of which 45 million was provided for constructing the homes in the earthquake zone. Besides that, there was something new added to the “2001-2003 Earthquake Zone Reconstruction project” passed by the National Assembly: they tried to solve the situation regarding the homes for homeless families through the help of the “Certificate for Home Purchase” provided by the Urban Institute of America. However, we must say once again that the number of homeless people reduced. Despite the fact that there were still 14,750 homeless families, it was planned to provide 10,359 families with homes. But even after all this the project did not complete what it had planned out. First of all, there were 120 buildings less than the foreseen number constructed in Gyumri: the last floors of some buildings remained incomplete. During the years of 2001-2003, 3,595 homes were constructed in the Shirak Marz. As to how much of the surface area was reconstructed, nobody knows for sure. All the supervising bodies assured us that there are no numbers. The only thing that they can say for sure is that 3,595 homes have been built. In reality, our deputies do not want to be “sure” that those numbers are correct because the homes built in Gyumri have a pretty low surface area. If we count the completed work with surface area, then the number of reconstructed buildings is humiliating. Despite all this, nearly 6,100 families were handed “Home Purchasing Certificates” (HPC). But there have probably been only 4.5 thousand families that have managed to buy homes. This means that only 8,095 families out of the foreseen 10,359 were provided with homes.
After that, there was no home construction in Gyumri in 2004 or 2005. No homes were built through the financial aid from the state budget and other sources. Currently, the state budget provides means for solving the problem of homeless families by getting HPCs. However, this method is not applied at all. According to the sources of the Ministry of Urbanization, 356 home purchase certificates have been distributed in Gyumri in 2005, however, only 23 families have been able to buy homes through that program. The state budget will provide 875 million drams for that in 2006. But we must confess that this will be in vain too.
The worst thing is that many families of Gyumri were once again cheated and they will most probably have to wait for Kirk Krikoryan or some other benefactor to provide the money for solving this problem. According to official data, 4,300 families are homeless in Gyumri alone.