Garni Residents Block Village Road, Refuse to Pay for PM’s Irrigation Water (Video)

Residents of the village of Garni in Armenia’s Kotayk province today blocked the main road leading out of the village to demand an “immediate halt” to the construction of water pipes which would transfer water from Azat River to a number of villages in Ararat province. The villagers unblocked the road after about eight hours, when officials agreed to remove construction equipment from the Azat River gorge. The villagers are convinced that the main intention behind the construction of the pipes is to provide Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan’s businesses with irrigation water.

Despite the Kotayk police chief’s calls to unblock the street and not to hinder the citizens’ movement, the protesters claimed they would not leave the area until construction equipment was removed from the Azat River gorge. 

Speaking to Epress.am, the villagers said the pipes are being built to draw water from Azat to irrigate the lands and fish farms belonging to Hovik Abrahamyan; among the demonstrators’ demands is the resignation of the head of the government.

“The burden of the $10 million debt, which they’ll take from the World Bank for the construction works, will again be placed on us, and the river will be ruined since it’s already drying up. The 12 villages [of the Ararat province] included in the program, which are supposed to use this water, will not actually benefit from the program, and the entire water will go to Narek and Kaghtsrashen, where Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan’s lands are located. These pipes are being built solely to provide these lands with irrigation water. These 12 villagers are fictitious beneficiaries that were only included in the program to convince the World Bank [to provide a loan]. In other words, the state is taking a $10 million debt and destroying the river to irrigate the Prime Minister’s lands,” Garni resident Sara Petrosyan told Epress.am.

According to the project presented by the Armenian hydropower project representatives, a pipe measuring 820 cm in diameter is to be built along the length of the river, which will transport water for two months in the summer to several villages in Ararat province. Garni residents, however, say that the flow of the river is powerful only in the spring, while in the summer, the river carries only 1,200 liters of water per second. The project, if implemented, will lead to the river drying up, which, in turn, will lead to the trees growing on the mountains around the river drying up and to the fish in the river dying, protesters insist.

The villagers also said they found it strange that the beginning of the construction works coincided with the latest escalation in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. In response to this, construction manager Vache Davtyan told Epress.am that works began on April 4 since a construction authorization from the community was only received on April 1. “Please, do not connect the beginning of the works with the war in Karabakh: our kids are also fighting there. Besides, 50% of the project profits go to NKR. The construction company is from Karabakh and, naturally, we’re paying taxes, and 50 percent of the profits go to Karabakh,” Davtyan stated.