HETQonline
They Either Don’t Know about Us, or Don’t Want to Know
April 9, 2007
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For people residing at 127/2 Gurgen Mahari Street (the former vocational
culinary school in Vardashen) extreme poverty is all the future offers.
According to Harutyun Sargsyan, a department head at the Erebuni district
administration, there are many people like this in their community.
77-year-old Harutyun Harutyunyan and his wife Shushik live in the kitchen of
the former cooking school. When they go to bed they cover themselves with
plastic bags to protect against the rainwater that drips through the
ceiling. Their possessions consist of what they have been able to gather on
the streets, since their apartment was robbed several years ago and all
their bedding and kitchenware were stolen. There is no running water or
bathroom facilities here. The elderly couple walk on a bare concrete floor
and sleep with their clothes on.

Shushik is blind and bedridden and thus unable to do housework. Twice a
week, every Monday and Wednesday, her husband gets two packets of sour cream
and two hot dogs from a nearby soup kitchen. On other days their menu
consists of boiled potatoes and bread. But their greatest cause of sorrow
and concern is their 35-year-old son Artur’s worsening disability. Over the
last years Artur has lost all movement in his legs. The couple hasn’t
received social allowances for several years now. "What do I know? One day
they told me that I was not entitled to it and they stopped paying,"
Harutyun Harutyunyan said hopelessly.
We were informed by the territorial department of the Erebuni district
social services that they were no longer eligible for government aid because
of the recent increase in their pensions – the husband’s pension is 14,551
drams (about $39) and the wife’s is 9,441 drams (about $25) per month.
Department head Siranuysh Poghosyan noted that there were 3,462 aid
recipients in the Erebuni district and many pensioners had been stricken
from the lists when their pensions increased by a few hundreds of drams. It
is more advantageous for the state to show higher pensions than more aid
recipients.
"If the people in need are left off the lists we try to help them by other
means. In many cases, for example, by decisions of the community assistance
council, once every three months we render them assistance in the form of
money or foodstuff. But we do not know about them unless they themselves
come here," Siranuysh Poghosyan said. It is not customary in Armenia for
social workers to go out looking for these people. If they don’t come in
themselves, it’s as if they don’t exist.
The worst problem for the residents of 127/2 Gurgen Mahari Street is the
miserable state of their housing. Harutyun Sargsyan of the Erebuni District
Administration notes that this is all that is available; the community has
no vacant housing resources. "The condominium associations are supposed to
deal with the improvement of the living conditions in the apartment
buildings but often they are unable to do it because of a lack of resources.
In these cases the district administration assists them. I don’t know what
the conditions are like in that particular building is but I assure you that
there are many buildings in an emergency situation in our community,"
Sargsyan said.

"We have written dozens of applications asking them to come and take a look
but they don’t come because they are not interested. If they were they would
have come and found out that our building is in critical condition. And, in
general, they either don’t know about us or don’t want to know," said Hasmik
Daveyan, a resident of #127/2 Gurgen Mahari Street says.
The floor of Hasmik Daveyan’s apartment is being destroyed by the damp. Her
nine-year-old daughter, Ani, attends Boarding School #11, a special school
in Sovetashen. When she was little Ani suffered a head injury and has
difficulties reading and writing. "I have to bring her home on weekends but
I don’t know how to keep her. There is no place to sleep here," Hasmik said.

All Hasmik’s neighbor Ruzanna owns is some bedding she found on the street
and the old clothes that serve pillows and blankets. She works as a cleaner
at the Gum market. Her old house burnt down and she found herself in a
dilapidated room on the top floor of 127/2 Gurgen Mahari Street, a room she
doesn’t even own. Her main concern is that her two sons are going to
graduate from the Sovetashen boarding school and will then be homeless. She
placed her five-year-old daughter in the children’s home in Gavar.

Christine Khachatryan was forced to send her eight-year-old son, Movses, to
the boarding school, too.
The mother is worried that after spending a few years in the school for
mentally disabled children her son will fall behind his peers. But she has
no other choice.
"I know that at least he is not hungry at the school and has a place to
sleep," Christine explained.
In this building, people send their children away to a school for the
disabled so they can have something to eat each day and a place to sleep.
The elderly live on a hundred grams of sour cream and two pieces of bread
from a soup kitchen. Their floors are bare and cold, and their walls are
damp and covered with mold.
Lena Nazaryan