Epress.am News from Armenia
Former employees of a textile plant that used to operate under the National Police of Armenia, formerly knows as the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and supply uniforms to the country's law-enforcement bodies gathered today outside the government building in Yerevan to demand AMD 30 million in back wages that the protesters claim they are owed. “Continent Text,” demonstrators said, was shut down five years ago but nearly 140 former employees have yet to receive their pay for the last months of production.
“We even have a court decision in our favor that has obligated the plant's management to sell the property and pay the employees' wages. But there's nothing worth selling in that plant; everything has been decayed. We've been going door-to-door for more than 3 years but we can't get anyone to pay us our money,” protester Gohar Tamamyan, who is owed over AMD 1 million, told Epress.am.
“It's like [staging protests] outside the Government building has become our job; we’ve applied to every possible state body, and they have all assured us that we would soon be paid. But it’s been 3 years, and we have yet to receive a penny. Doesn’t the national police chief [Vladimir Gasparyan] see that his former employees are going door-to-door asking for their money? He is unreachable to us; it's impossible to get him to meet with us,” Tamamyan said.