RFE/RL Armenian Report – 08/02/2019

                                        Friday, 

Ethnic Armenian Employees At Russian Airport ‘Asked’ To Quit Jobs

        • Aza Babayan

The Sochi International Airport (Sochi-Adler Airport) in the Black Sea resort 
city of Sochi, Russia

A group of ethnic Armenian employees of the International Airport of Sochi 
issued a statement this week, claiming that the airport authorities in this 
southern Russian city have shown a discriminative approach to them recently by 
seeking to force them out of jobs on ethnic grounds.

The statement was signed by a total of 29 people. An RFE/RL Armenian Service 
correspondent in Russia talked to some of these people, who alleged an order 
“from above”.

Sargis Margarian, one of the staff members at the Sochi airport who signed the 
statement, said that they were told unofficially that there was an order “from 
above” to make all ethnic Armenians quit their jobs -- by offering them to do 
so of their own will.

“I haven’t submitted an application [about quitting the job]. I’m going to 
fight against them. There has never been any conflict between ethnic Armenians 
and the administration of the airport. We don’t understand what it is. We will 
go as far as turning to the Prosecutor’s Office,” Margarian said.

The man stressed that if the case reaches the court he is ready to testify that 
he was asked to quit the job because he is an Armenian. “This is what I was 
told,” said Margarian, a resident of the city where some 20 percent of the 
425,000-strong population is ethnic Armenians.

Ashot Karagechian, another ethnic Armenian employee of the Sochi airport, said: 
“Everything that is said in the statement is absolutely true. I confirm every 
line of that statement.” The man still found it difficult to name reasons for 
such an approach towards Armenians.

Another ethnic Armenian employee, Albert Minasian, said: “My immediate 
supervisor, our engineer, came up to me and said in a low voice: ‘You know, 
some nonsense is happening, but there’s been an order from above to sack 
Armenians.’ He then advised that I submit an application and quit my job. But 
I’m not stupid to do that.”

The Sochi airport is owned by Basel Aero, a company of Russian magnate Oleg 
Deripaska who has close ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Talking to 
RFE/RL’s Armenian Service, Anna Shalimova, head of the company’s press service, 
denied the accusations made by the group of ethnic Armenian staffers. She said 
that the airport employs representatives of different ethnicities and that the 
company’s personnel policies are in line with the Russian legislation.

“But a small group of people who recently stopped working at the company 
deliberately use their ethnic identity to demand special conditions for them. 
We believe that apart from not being within the legal field, the activities of 
this group of people incite inter-ethnic hatred, which is unacceptable,” said 
Shalimova.

At least the people that the RFE/RL Armenian Service correspondent talked to 
insisted that they are currently employed by the airport and are not former 
workers as stated by the company’s representative.



Operator Offers Plan To End ‘Garbage Crisis’ In Yerevan


Representatives of the Sanitek company gave a press conference in Yerevan, 
02Aug2019

A Lebanese-run waste management company has offered a plan to authorities in 
Yerevan to end a yearlong garbage crisis in the city that specialists say 
contains risks to public health.

Sanitek has for months been under fire for its poor work in the Armenian 
capital, with the city authorities fining the company a total of 90 million 
drams (about $190,000) during the period for falling short of required 
standards in waste management.

Yerevan Mayor Hayk Marutian has not concealed his dissatisfaction with the work 
of the waste management company. During consultations at the municipality on 
July 29 he accused Sanitek of “only seeking profits and having no feeling of 
responsibility.”

Marutian, who has repeatedly said before that he was also mindful of the 
contract obligations related to Sanitek, also spoke about the possibility of 
the Yerevan municipality’s resolving the waste management crisis in the city 
through its own efforts.

Sanitek, for its part, has blamed its difficulties in organizing proper garbage 
disposal in Yerevan on poor roads and excessive damage to its equipment. The 
company has also claimed that the Yerevan municipality is not willing to 
cooperate with it on acceptable terms.

At a press conference in Yerevan on Friday, speaking via Skype, Sanitek’s 
director Nicholas El Tawil offered his vision of short-term and long-term 
solutions to the garbage crisis in Yerevan. In particular, he said that since 
Yerevan authorities have already purchased a certain quantity of new trucks and 
dustbins, they could join efforts with Sanitek to put an end to the current 
garbage crisis within a short period of time. El Tawil also urged the 
municipality to stop a negative portrayal of Sanitek in the media.

“As a long-term solution we are ready to immediately make an investment of $4 
million for the purchase of new garbage trucks and dustbins,” he said, adding 
that the company will also need to invest annually to purchase 500 dustbins and 
keep upgrading the available fleet of trucks as far as possible.

Sanitek’s director also said that the company will introduce corporate 
governance to provide transparency and accountability and will introduce to the 
municipality “a system of horizontal monitoring.” “And we are ready to do the 
restructuring of the financial liabilities,” he said.

Meanwhile, according to El Tawil, the municipality should on its part draft and 
implement a waste management policy and action plan, improve the infrastructure 
at the Nubarashen landfill near Yerevan, introduce a large-scale waste 
management policy and strengthen the supervision.

Sanitek’s director also spoke about the need for revising the existing contract 
price “by having an extra opinion” that, he said, will assess the commercial 
value of the services provided by the company.

El Tawil also said that the municipality should extend the terms of the 
agreement with Sanitek and repay the already applied “unlawful deductions.”

“As we say, one hand doesn’t clap. We need two hands to clap,” concluded 
Sanitek’s director El Tawil.

The Yerevan municipality did not respond immediately to the proposals.

During the press conference Sanitek representatives also described the criminal 
case launched against the company over alleged tax evasion as unlawful. 
Armenia’s tax authorities insist that Sanitek failed to pay 290 million drams 
(over $600,000) in taxes, while the company explains that it did not evade 
taxes, but simply benefited from the law that gives certain tax preferences to 
foreign investors.



Mayor Vows Yerevan Cleanup ‘With or Without’ Sanitek


Yerevan Mayor Hayk Marutian (file photo)

Yerevan authorities will go ahead with their efforts to try to solve the 
current garbage crisis in the city “with or without” the current monopolist 
waste management operator, mayor of the Armenian capital Hayk Marutian told a 
local online publication late on Friday.

Marutian thus effectively rejected the terms offered by Sanitek, an 
underperforming Lebanese-run waste management company, for a joint quick fix to 
the problem.

Sanitek has for months been under fire for its poor work in the Armenian 
capital, with the city authorities fining the company a total of 90 million 
drams (about $190,000) since the beginning of this year for falling short of 
required standards in waste management.

The company has blamed its difficulties in organizing proper garbage disposal 
in Yerevan on poor infrastructure and excessive damage to its equipment. The 
company has also claimed that the Yerevan municipality is not willing to 
cooperate with it on acceptable terms.

At a press conference in Yerevan on Friday, speaking via Skype, Sanitek’s 
director Nicholas El Tawil offered his vision of short-term and long-term 
solutions to the garbage crisis in Yerevan. In particular, he said that the 
company is ready to immediately invest $4 million for the purchase of new 
garbage trucks and containers and keep annually investing in the purchase of 
500 containers and upgrading the available fleet of trucks.

Sanitek’s director, however, called on the municipality to improve the 
infrastructure at the landfill near Yerevan, revise the existing contract price 
and repay the already applied “unlawful deductions.”

“As we say, one hand doesn’t clap. We need two hands to clap,” concluded El 
Tawil.

Speaking live on 1in TV, Mayor Marutian again criticized Sanitek for its poor 
performance and insisted that they are not up to the job. He stressed that 
Yerevan’s municipality has been providing full financing to Sanitek without any 
delays and spoke against raising the contract price with the company, which 
would inevitable entail the rise of tariffs for the population.

“Yerevan must be cleaned,” Marutian emphasized. “We will clean up Yerevan with 
or without Sanitek. We are embarking on this process, following a very concrete 
and straightforward path.”

Marutian said that efforts in this direction are underway and until the end of 
September almost the entire required quantity of garbage trucks will be 
available for Yerevan. According to the mayor, Yerevan’s authorities will be 
able to deduct waste management expenses from the price of the contract they 
have with Sanitek if the company continues to underperform.

Sanitek Armenia, which is a branch of the Lebanese-headquartered Sanitek 
International Group, has a 12-year contract with Yerevan as a monopolistic 
waste management operator. It began its work in Yerevan in December 2014.

The company has threatened to apply for international arbitration to resolve 
its dispute with the Yerevan municipality.

In a press release today Sanitek said that on Monday it will start 
“pre-arbitration” contacts with the Armenian government, thus showing that it 
“does not shut the door for continued negotiations with the municipality in 
order to find a mutually acceptable and optimal solution that will also be the 
best for the population.”



Press Review


“Aravot” writes: “The revolution is not completed, it is continuing. 
Accordingly, the counterrevolution is continuing, too. And while the goal of 
the revolutionaries is to preserve the achievements of the revolution, the 
counterrevolutionaries hope that with their activities that can at least partly 
recover what they lost because of the revolution. And those who consider it 
possible are looking for supporters… Now counterrevolutionaries are coming 
together and their immediate plan is to get former president Robert Kocharian 
released from pretrial detention.”

“Zhoghovurd” comments on the legislative amendments proposed by the Ministry of 
Finance that would provide some respite to those who have mortgage loans in the 
form of ‘loan vacations’. “We think it gives a big chance to prospective home 
buyers not to be afraid of taking out mortgage plans. Most people today avoid 
having a mortgage because of the prospect of difficulties in repaying the 
interest rates, preferring to rent homes. If passed and signed into law, the 
initiative will make a revolution on the mortgage market,” the paper concludes.

Lragir.am suggests that the latest tensions at the Armenian-Azerbaijani border 
took place against the background of two major events – the large protests 
taking place in Moscow and a rise in tensions in the Russian-Georgian 
relations. “Then Azerbaijan began a new historic-political assault on the 
Georgian border. By and large, these local manifestations against the backdrop 
of larger developments in the region were part of [Azerbaijan’s] larger assault 
[against the Armenian border] and it is interesting that it took place against 
the background of Russian supplies of S-400 missile systems to Turkey,” the 
online paper comments. “This acquisition put Ankara in a difficult situation, 
as it strained its relations with the West, giving the West a reasonable basis 
for steps against it, and on the other hand it threw Turkey into the ‘friendly’ 
embrace of Russia. In this regard, Ankara perhaps tried to balance the 
situation with pinpointed action to make Moscow owe it too. For this purpose, 
it involved Azerbaijan in targeting Georgia and Armenia’s northeastern border.”

(Lilit Harutiunian)


Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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Emil Lazarian

“I should like to see any power of the world destroy this race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, literature is unread, music is unheard, and prayers are no more answered. Go ahead, destroy Armenia . See if you can do it. Send them into the desert without bread or water. Burn their homes and churches. Then see if they will not laugh, sing and pray again. For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a New Armenia.” - WS