The Arabkir district has approximately a one million square meter
area. Every day, three brigades consisting of 46 custodians clean up
the streets. Each custodian cleans 3500 square meters daily. This
number is the equivalent of one salary. One salary is 15,000 drams.
Many of the custodians do other work and get about 50,000 drams and
more. Thirty trucks must transfer the district garbage, twelve must
water the streets, in the winter four trucks pour salt on the snow, and
there is one loader and one grater. Picking up the garbage with one
truck costs 20,000 dram.
For Mrs. Nazik, her job is as important as the President’s job. Mrs.
Nazik is not alone. The rest of the custodians of the Arabkir district
and the garbage truck drivers also think like that. I was convinced of
that when I tried doing the job that they do. I started cleaning up the
trash near one section of the Komitas market. I had just started the
“job”, when the “owner of the area” approached me. He did not want to
let me work in his place just like that. He made a rumor out of the
whole thing and pretty soon I saw the brigadier of the custodians and
their colleagues. They had not informed them beforehand about their
“new colleague” and the fight against letting me work there got very
serious. Even the dogs had sensed some kind of danger and I was forced
to “reveal” myself soon. I got a good impression and did not get a
chance to talk with the night-shift custodians at the Komitas market.
We continued until we came to the “Barekamutyun” metro station and met
another brigade led by Mrs. Nazik. Here, we learned from our mistake
and presented ourselves. We were welcomed open-heartedly.
They keep the city alive at night
Mrs. Nazik starts work from 5 a.m. in the morning. Her group is
responsible for cleaning the streets starting from the Komitas-Brusov
intersection until the Baghramian-Proshyan section and all of Kievyan.
Twenty three custodians clean up that entire area. Most of Nazik’s
colleagues are from Jrvezh and they come to work by bus. They are
mostly women. Nazik supervises to see how they do their job. Each
person does his or her job and talks at the same time in order to not
get lost in the dark. “We do that in case a drunkard passes by or a
‘maniac’. A couple of days ago, someone closed my mouth and tried to
choke me. I barely freed myself. One woman has even been stabbed. Those
kinds of people don’t quit until they don’t see some blood,” says Mrs.
Nazik. Chief of the Police Department of the Arabkir District Gagig
Avetisyan said: “We have no information regarding that. There is no
maniac. It is interesting to know that the first to hear about such
things are the journalists.” But we know for a fact that the police are
aware of the “maniac”. As to whether or not the police are doing
something against that, we do not know. “In general, this is a very
dangerous and ungrateful job. We clean the street, then someone opens
the window and throws the garbage bag right where I had just swept.
There are people who get out in the morning and just leave the garbage
on the sidewalk,” says Mrs. Kimivard. In addition, on July 22 of this
year, a car passing by Baghramian street hit one of the custodians, who
is a mother of three, and just went without helping. “That woman is
still in bed and they have not caught the driver. Only hooligans drive
fast at that hour. If it was some innocent person, they would have
sentenced him a hundred times,” said one of the women. “One of our
women got ran over by a car on Komitas street in spring and died.
Nobody cares,” said one of the custodians. Very often, there is a
dispute between residents and passer-bys. They complain about the rich:
“They do more bad things than the poor”. For the custodians it is an
insult when they clean up the place and then see that people have
messed it up by either doing it intentionally or due to lack of
respect. “The thing is that we are cleaning for them. Which is better?
Dirty or clean? I really don’t understand anymore. When we scold them,
they say mean things to us, they even make attempts in hitting us,”
complains Mrs. Kimivard. There are residents who can’t sleep because of
the sound of the brooms. There are cases when the problem ends in
court. “The resident living on the second alley of Baghramyan street is
a composer who considers himself to be an intellectual. One day while
we were working, he opened his door and started cursing in a very mean
tone. Then he got a rock and threw it at me. If one of my colleagues
had not pulled me away, the rock might have landed on my face. We sued
him and he was forced to come to court and apologize to me,” said Mrs.
Nazik. “You see these dogs? They don’t leave our side until we are
finished. They defend us from rude people. You should see the dogs as
they come out of the bus. They get so happy to see us.”
The custodians also complain of the working conditions. It has already
been four months and they have not received a salary. But they all work
every day, even on holidays because they think that there is more
cleaning to be done on holidays. Their work day ends when ours starts.
The custodians go home, but the brigadiers and the already turned
leaders do a total “check-up “and hand the work in. But on that same
day we passed by that street at 11 a.m. and saw that it did not look as
clean as it had been. The dirt had settled on the ground again. We
Armenians are not used to throwing a cigarette or the pack in the
trashcan. If there is a trashcan, then we will throw it. When a child
gives the candy wrapper to his or her mother, the mother takes it and
throws it on the ground. Then we talk about having an educated
generation.
The company responsible for the cleaning of the Arabkir district’s
streets is the former state establishment formed on a base and the
present “Clean City” INC. The company works under the conditions stated
by the Arabkir district council. “A contest is announced and the
winning company implements the work,” explained Chief of the Communal
Department of the Arabkir district council Hrair Antonyan. The contest
is formal because the contract is signed with the company who can
provide cleaning services. The law just requires announcing a contest.
The owner of the “Clean City” company is Harutyun Antonyan and Hrair
Antonyan’s brother. But rumor has it that their father Samvel Antonyan
is the one in charge of the company. It turns out that the employer and
the employee are the two brothers or, better yet, father and son.
According to Hrair Antonyan, the district council has signed a contract
with the company starting from March until the end of the year and has
agreed to pay 1,000,000 million drams for all the work done on
cleaning. Neither Mr. Antonyan nor the company could tell us how much
has already been paid to the company. Mr. Antonyan only said that the
district council has fulfilled all its obligations. The custodians are
complaining about not receiving their salary for four months already.
“When we complain, they say that the district council does not transfer
the money on time and they can not collect the rents in exchange for
the service being done,” The company’s budget is “filled” by the fees
paid by the residents and the economists. The average fee charged from
one resident is 100 drams a month. As for the economic management team,
judging from the explanation given by the financiers, the collecting of
money is done using the “estimation by sight” principle, meaning based
on how efficiently the work is done. In both cases, 50% of the fees are
paid. The financiers complain that the poor are the ones who give the
money more easily than the rich. “One time I went into a house of 11
people and asked them to at least give a couple of months rent. They
pulled a knife on me,” said one of the financiers.
The “Arabkir” supermarket in front of the Komitas market, according to
the financier of that area, does not pay anything but puts the garbage
in the trashcan or just throws it out in the street for the trucks to
take it with them. Another case is the “Khnus” macaroni factory. The
owner of both businesses is National Assembly deputy Armen Mkhitaryan.
At the supermarket, they told us that they have a contract but they
would not show it to us. At the factory, the workers said that they
take their garbage to Sovetashen and throw it there. It would be very
naive to think that they go to Sovetashen just to throw trash. We have
seen many cases when they come with their cars to an apartment
building, throw their trash there or near the trashcan and then just
“escape”. If we pay closer attention, we will notice that those cars
are very often the same cars. In any case, the “Clean City” INC is an
organization that functions according to its interests and the economic
managers do not want to enrich the organization on the account of those
interests. Nobody cares that the custodian on the street or the garbage
truck driver has not received the paycheck for four consecutive months.
Nobody cares if society has changed. The worker just expects to get his
salary after working so hard. We all want to see the garbage picked up
on rainy days, during the cold winter and even on holidays so we can
walk on the clean streets.