More than two hundred angry employees of Armenia’s two largest chemical enterprises Nairit demonstrated yesterday to demand the payment of their back wages for the past 3-4 months. They marched to the Presidential residence.
“The management of this factory doesn’t communicate with us. In order to reach them we need to go through 5 locked doors. They are not even human. We can’t call this pack of wolves human. We want the President to tell him, “Hey, sheep if you cannot make this make the factory work decently just leave,” the employees of the factory were complaining. According to them the administration of the factory received high wages – starting from 1000 USD but the ordinary employees are paid 70.000 AMD and their salary is laid off for months. “Just come and check the salaries and comfortable offices of the administration. And we don’t have working conditions,” the factory employees were saying. The employee of the rubber lab of the factory Gayane Arakelyan was yesterday telling us that in order to cure her son she asked support from the director but the latter refused to help. “He didn’t even pay my salary,” she was saying and adding, “If the director of the factory cannot make the factory work properly he should leave. We will continue complaining till our salaries are raised and until our 4-month salary is fully paid. So wherever they go to beg money let them give our money too.” “We haven’t been paid for seven months,” one of them Hovhannes Ghazaryan told RFL Armenian service. “If I got my wages, I would be able to take care of my winter expenses. We should buy potatoes, cabbage and onions. And the prices are going up day by day. I have been surviving these 4 months with the money sent from my son from Russia,” said another man. Another protester said that they want to have a new director elected by the plant employees. "The factory is in a terrible plight. It has a lot of unsettled debts which hinder the plant’s normal operation," she said. The protesters say the director has ordered them to keep silent; otherwise he threatened to fire them. By the way the General manager of the plant Vahan Melkonyan was also near the President’s residence. He said they were looking forward to decisions by relevant bodies, including the Russian authorities, to finish the reconstruction and re-operate plant. "The non-payment of wages and suspension of the plant’s work has technical and political reasons. I think the issue will be tackled in the near future," he said. According to Vahan Melkonyan the average salary makes AMD 105-110 in the plant while the employees said they receive AMD 70.000. “The debt was originated because 97% of the product of the factory is being exported. And in Armenia the price of gas and electrical power is pretty expensive in Armenia. These conditions do not enable us to have a competitive price. This is the issue of the Armenian economy and not the international market. This is a political matter and in order to have a factory like this in Armenia certain conditions are needed. If the same policy is applied by the state to Nairit and other non-chemical factory then I think the future of the factory is pretty obscure.” According to Melkonyan if solutions are not found it is quite possible that the issues will be even more accumulated. In his words chemical production is pretty costly and energy-requiring but the factory was built during the soviet era and many factors were not taken into account. “Today we are having 60% loss of hydro energy. Only 40% is effectively used. It means that we are more warming the air of Armenia than the chemical production,” he said. Let us recall that 168-Zham has numerously adverted to not only the situation in Nairit but the cases of corruption connected with V. Melkonyan. And the latter has always tried to deny that. The chief of the presidential administration, Karen Karapetyan, discussed the situation at Nairit with representatives of the protesters and the company director, Vahan Melkonian. The presidential press office said Karapetian “harshly criticized” the Nairit management for developing a backlog of back wages and “driving workers to extreme actions.” “He was subjected to very serious criticism for putting the staff in this situation,” Karapetyan told the protesters afterwards, pointing to Melkonyan. “It is inhuman that people don’t receive wages for 4 months now. How are they supposed to love? Shall they use the air to feed their families? There are families that work for Nairit, which means that certain families totally depend on the wages to be paid by Nairit. How can these people live?” asked Karapetyan to the management of the factory. The latter also met with the people gathered outside and shared with them the concerns of the President. He also mentioned that Nairit is not state property and the state has no right to interfere in the factory’s economic activity. Karapetyan mentioned that the state is concerned about the future of Nairit, which plays an essential role in the economy of the country. “We are obliging them to quickly solve your issues,” he said. According to Karapetyan, Serzh Sargsyan is also concerned about the future of Nairit, which has largely stood idle since March. The Armenian president thinks that “everything must be done to reactivate the plant,” he said. "President Serzh Sargsyan has already instructed the relevant bodies to take action to pay the wages during the next 10 days and the remaining sum within a month," said the head of the Armenian presidential administration. He assured that Sargsyan believes that everything should be done to “make the factory re-function.” Let us mention that the employees of the factory were also demanding the resignation of Vahan Melkonyan. “Let this director leave. We don’t need him.”
By N. Martirosyan