Unpaid Grape Farmer Says He Sees No Future in Armenia

Gevorg Harutyunyan, a grape farmer from the Ararat province village of Kaghtsrashen who is still owed AMD 1 705 000 by a local winery for produce sold in 2015, today picketed outside the government building in Yerevan in the hope of meeting with Armenia’s Culture Minister Armen Amiryan, who during the pre-parliamentary election period had promised to familiarize himself with the issue and help the Kaghtsrashen farmers.

Note, the Kaghtsrashen grape farmers – who after an unusually rich harvest in the fall of 2015 had to sell their grapes to the local Vinar winery for as little as 40 drams per kilogram – have fruitlessly been fighting for nearly two years and staging numerous demonstrations outside government offices in Yerevan to get the winery to finally pay for the procured produce.

Today Harutyunyan did not get to meet with Amiryan after all; he did, however, manage to have a short conversation with Agriculture Minister Ignati Arakelyan, according to whom, “Vinar has nothing and cannot pay the grape farmers, so we’ll have to find another way to pay off the debt.”

Speaking to Epress.am, the farmer said if officials keep constantly lying, the villagers will start resorting to extreme measures. “I don’t know what else can be done here. I might just sell everything I own, pay off my loans and leave the country with my family,” Harutyunyan added.