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
Copyright (c) 2019 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc.
1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.
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