Martz Villagers Submitted Statement against Corruption on “Martziget-1” SHPP

EcoLur

Martz villagers have applied to the Territorial Anticorruption Center On Protection of Interests in Vanadzor in regard with the construction of “Martziget-1” SHPP. EcoLur working group had a meeting with the villagers in Martz who signed the application. Below is the interview with several participants of the meeting.

Martz Villager Pargev Hakobyan: “It’s me who applied to the Anticorruption Center. I have written an application and another two signed together me. And though the application has only my name in it, I can speak on behalf of the whole village. The application says that several people in our village take money to sign for the construction of SHPP. I think that the Anticorruption Center will help to give assessment to all this.”

EcoLur: Do you want to say that corruption risks are available in the process of “Martziget-1” SHPP?

Pargev Hakobyan: Yes, this is an application against corruption. But I don’t want to call names yet.

EcoLur: We have heard that the elderly population mainly oppose to SHPP construction, while the youth supports it. Pargev Hakobyan: Most village opposes to it irregardless of the age, both the elderly, and the youth and the children. Up to 90% of the villagers are against, as we don’t want our nature to dry out and the fish to disappear. We have different fish species in our river, as well as our lands. We irrigate them with the water from the river. If a SHPP is constructed, we won’t have any water for irrigation. The river belongs to us. Our village is based on the river and our land is here. I don’t care who will interfere, I just don’t want the SHPP to be constructed.

Ex Village Head Hrachik Hovakimyan (1996-2005): Whoever wants to construct this SHPP, s/he doesn’t want any good for our village: both the nature and the land areas will be spoilt. When the first SHPP was constructed, we didn’t realize what it was and only then we realized. We should have banned the first construction. Now we have changes in the arid places, we have more snakes and scorpions. We let them spoil everything. Even without this it’s hard to live in the village. If we lose the land areas, migration will get stronger. What will be benefit from this SHPP? Two people will be employed for 30,000 AMD, this is not even a salary, but paltry dole to the poor. We have 90 people who own land areas in these territories. But in this way they will lose their jobs. If we lose 200,000 AMD versus 2000 AMD, what is our benefit? The company said they would give 2 million AMD to the village, if to divide this sum for all, we’ll get 2000 AMD. People can feed their families only due to land incase their salaries are low.

Martz villager (didn’t say his name): We know that several people took money and put their signatures as a sign of agreement.

EcoLur calls Nature Protection Ministry and other stakeholders to stop “Martziget-1” SHPP unless a conclusion is made on corruption availability in getting villagers’ consent. We also think that if the Nature Protection Ministry is submitted villagers’ signatures as a consent for the construction, according to the villagers’ application, this document should be passed to law enforcement bodies as material evidence of the availability of corruption risks in the process of receiving environmental expertise opinion.

August 06, 2013 at 13:37