UNDP ARMENIA TO HELP CARRY DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS FOR RURAL COMMUNITIES

ARMENPRESS
Jan 30, 2008

YEREVAN, JANUARY 30, ARMENPRESS: The UNDP Armenia Office will help
implement this year a set of rural development programs in three
Armenian provinces.

Particularly, it will help restore the irrigation network of the
village of Lusadzor in Tavush province.

As a result 50 hectares of land will receive irrigation water. This
particular project will be implemented with the financial support of
the Italian government as part of a broader reprogram for elimination
of rural poverty. The village will also have a new drinking water
network.

Vrezh Jijian, UNDP program coordinator, told Armenpress that the
village does not have a drinking water system now and the villagers
use two springs instead. The work will be started in March and end
in August.

The other targeted rural communities are in the Ashotsk region of
the northwestern price of Shirak.

Last year the government of Norway helped establish there agricultural
machinery pool to serve Bavra, Saragyugh, Sizavet and Tavshut villages.

In the framework of that project, the old Soviet-time pool was fully
renovated and a fleet of several brand new machinery units have been
provided including four Belarus-made wheeled tractors, one plough,
a tractor-mounted mowing-machine, a baling press, a potato combine
and an automated potato-planter.

Due to the new equipment, many of the plough-lands which were used
previously as natural hayfields and were not cultivated properly
now are available for grain crops and potato growing. This will
significantly increased the per-hectare gross yield, which will be
incomparably higher than the yield from hayfields.

The agricultural machinery pool will serve all the four communities
of the cluster. Primary beneficiaries of the pool are the socially
vulnerable families of the four villages the total number of which
makes around one hundred households. These four villages will receive
new agricultural machinery this year as well.

An agricultural machinery pool, a flour mill and a seed station will
be established also with the help of the UNDP for the village of
Yeghvard in southern province of Syunik.

Vrezh Jijian said they expect also funds this year to start
reconstruction of a drinking water network in the village of Pokr in
Meghri region of Syunik.