Epress.am News from Armenia
Several dozen employees of Yerevan's idling Nairit chemical plant staged yet another protest over unpaid salaries outside the Government offices today, demanding a meeting with prime minister Karen Karapetyan. The remaining 260 workers of the plant, among them 90 security guards, are each owed nearly 600 thousand drams in back wages for the past 5 months.
“We are also human; winter is coming and we have to somehow live through it. What do they suggest we do? Should we resort to looting [to provide for out families]? Furthermore, they have now told us that on December 16 the entire security staff will be let go and replaced by police officers who'll work for lower pay,” protester Hamlet Parsamyan told Epress.am.
The desperate employees have taken the issue to the office of the president, the government, and the ministry of natural resources and energy infrastructure, but they have yet to be offered a solution. “We've been working [at Nairit] for 7 years, and we are now being replaced by police officers. This must be a new form of money laundering,” Parsamyan added.