Economy and ecology journalists of Armenia protest against actions of
new ecology minister

arminfo
2007-07-06 16:47:00

Representatives of the two press clubs of Armenia – economy and ecology
journalists of Armenia protest against actions of new ecology minister,
the former urban minister Aram Harutyunyan.

As ArmInfo correspondent came to know from trustworthy sources, the
minister has recently organized a trip of several representatives of
mass media, including the local TV company ‘H2’ to Tekhut
copper-molybdenum deposit in Lori region of Armenia. These mass media
were "charged" to prepare articles where the ecology measures of
Armenian Copper Programme (ACP) were presented positively. Meanwhile,
the major part of 20 ecology public organizations, that formed the
coalition SOS-Tekhut and members of the above mentioned press clubs did
not find themselves in that trip. To recall, at the beginning of the
current year the coalition SOS-Tekhut applied to the president of the
republic with a
letter and asked to revise the problem of expediency of exploiting the
deposit via the open processing. Moreover, ecologists said about
violation of several laws and international conventions as well as
about defects of the project on exploitation of the deposits, charged
by the ACP, that got a right to exploit that for 25 years. The project
did not contain conclusion on possible damage to the health of the
Tekhut and Shnokh residents, as well as ancient archaeologic monuments,
virgin wood and fresh water source, that runs through the Tekhut
deposit.

Members of the organizations are going to submit to the minister their
protest against evident attempts to isolate the active part of the
ecology community of the country from the problems of Tekhut. But the
minister avoids meeting them, and his assistants explain this that
himself with the affairs, he is not ready to meet them>.