Epress.am News from Armenia
Dozens of former employees of Glass World Company, a glass container producing plant located in the town of Byureghavan in Armenia's central Kotayk province, gathered Thursday outside the government building in Yerevan and subsequently walked to the presidential residence to demand that Armenian authorities to oblige the company's management pay the 3 to 6 months' salaries owed to its over 300 workers.
Speaking to Epress.am, protester Hamlet Harutyunyan said the employees have appealed to all possible instances and even have a court ruling in their favour; however, “no one can get the plant's management to pay the money.”
“I don't understand – not even the president of the country is able to do that? One would think that the manager of Glass World Company is the most important man in Armenia and no one can force him to fulfill a court decision. We don't know what else to do,” Harutyunyan stated. He added that the company owes each of its employees from 150 to 450 thousand drams (about $317-951).
“They'd pay us some part of the debt after every previous protest action; but we are sick and tired of of the situation and demand that the entire money is paid. We are all old people, no one is hiring us any more. We've been idle since August [2015] and have no means of subsistence,” demonstrator Samvel Diloyan told our reporter.
An employee of the office of the Armenian president, who refused to give his name, came out to listen to the workers' demands and assured them that he would personally contact the manager of the plant as well as Kotayk governor Karapet Guloyan to clarify the situation. The promise, however, did not sound convincing to the protesters who said that “these are words we have heard time and time again.”