EcoLur
In the morning of June 11, Shnogh and Teghout villages, Lori Region, blocked the road leading to 'Teghout' CJSC. The residents are demanding to recover their working places in the company, as they had been deprived of their source of income because of the development of Teghout mine.
'Our community residents have been expropriated, we have been deprived of our land areas, plow land areas, orchards, pastures, forests, where we used to gather berries, mushrooms and could earn money for our families. They have applied different methods to deprive us of our land areas, they made us refuse from our land areas threatening us not to hire the family members of those people, who don't obey them. For example, my family didn't give them the land areas and they took us through the court. We have been expropriated relying on the operation of this establishment and have taken out loans. Why should people not from Shnogh community work on the land areas taken from us? Our demand is to prioritize the residents of Shnogh and Teghout communities in terms of employment,' a Teghout resident expressed her complaint-demand in her interview with the Azatutyun Radio Station.
'We will block the road as long as all our problems are given exhaustive solutions. The forest has been cut off – we remained siled, the rivers have been polluted – we kept silence... we have nothing to lose, we have already lost whatever it has been possible to lose,' the residents said.
They mentioned that they had had a meeting with the company representatives one week before, who promised to solve all the problems, but hadn't done anything.
Shnogh Community Head David Ghumashyan was also in the venue of the protest demonstration. He had brought with him the minutes drawn up at that meeting, which was read out by one of the residents. According to the minutes, Information and Public Relations Department Head of Vallex Group Company said, 'The VTB Bank has sent us a letter, which says our loan interests have increased by 3 percent and we don't know what to do.' According to the company representatives, currently they have 61 employees, out of which 22 people are from Teghout, 15 people are from Shnogh, 14 people are from Alaverdi and 10 people are from other communities.
When the minutes were read out, Shnogh Community Head Davit Ghumashyan proposed to go to his office together with 4-5 residents, to contact with the company on the phone and to receive the answers to the raised questions.
June 11, 2018 at 15:21