After Minister of Labor and Social Issues of the Republic of Armenia
Aghvan Vartanyan departed from Vartenis, mayor of Vardenis Valodya
Khloyan approached me. He looked at me as if I was a journalist for the
ministry and asked me: “So, you only do tapings of officials: You don’t
care how the average person lives.” Khloyan told me about the
difficulties facing the families in Vartenis and brought up one family
with many children as an example. He was amazed when I told him that I
would write an article about that. We picked up some pastries on the
road and made our way to one of the homes.
Yurik Nuneyan, who is currently unemployed, has nine kids. The
government grants the family 33,000 drams a month which is not enough.
Yurik’s wife Naira told me that the mayor of Vartenis helps them out
very often. I wanted to see if this was true, so I pointed at the mayor
and asked the children who it was. They said: “That’s Khlo Valod”.
I found out that only Knarik had been able to go to school this year.
Vahe, Suren, Ara and Lilit don’t attend school because the family has
no money to pay for clothes and books. The mayor got upset as he heard
all of this. He pointed out that there should not have been such a
problem this year due to the fact that the city council had granted
100,000 drams to each of the four schools in Vardenis so that they
could buy books for the needy children. But it turns out that the
school principals don’t feel the rush of spending the money and they
promise to buy the books in the 2006 school year. “If I knew that this
would happen, I would personally buy the books and open a library for
the children,” said Khloyan furiously. The children now have to wait
another two years for September 1 until they can finally go to school.