Epress.am News from Armenia
Volodya Achemyan, a 65-year-old member of a Sanitek Armenia garbage pickup crew who has recently had his leg amputated after being hit by a car on Yerevan’s Baghramyan-Kievyan intersection in late March, has been getting no help whatsoever from Sanitek; representatives of the garbage removal company have not even visited Achemyan in hospital, his daughter, Ruzanna Achemyan, tells Epress.am. Sanitek has also been refusing to hire Ruzanna as a cleaner, insisting that the woman has been “blacklisted” by the company. The Achemyans say they plan to take the issue to court not only in connection with this particular incident, but also for the sake of “establishing order in Sanitek.”
Over the years, Ruzanna says, she has worked for various Yerevan waste management companies, including Sanitek, as a cleaner; “I was present at the opening of Sanitek. [Yerevan mayor] Taron Margaryan came and said, ‘You’ll be getting 500 dollars a month, everything will be very good.’ But at first [the salary] was 130 000 drams (less than $270), then – 105 000 drams, and now we are getting only 70 000. How can one provide for three kids with this kind of money?”
Last summer, Ruzanna, along with several other Sanitek employees, took on a second job as cleaners at a Yerevan market. Immediately upon finding out, the Sanitek management made the women hand in their resignation letter.
“We had only been working at the market for a week when Sanitek officials came for us… They were filming the entire process, as if we were some kind of criminals. It’s not like they were paying me 500 dollars – I couldn’t afford not working anywhere else. They took us to a room and locked us there; then one of their officials came and began talking to us rudely… In a word, they fired us and refused to pay for the last 15 days. They told us we would be able to work [in Sanitek] again in two months, so we signed the resignation letters,” Ruzanna says. According to the woman, however, Sanitek has since been refusing the re-hire the women, claiming that they have been “blacklisted.”
Ruzanna’s 65-year-old father Volodya began working for Sanitek shortly after she was fired. A few months later, however, the man was hit by a car while on duty as a result of the company’s violation of safety rules and is now unable to work.
Achemyan has been in hospital for nearly two months; according to Ruzanna, Sanitek has given them only 1 800 000 drams for health insurance, which has not even been enough for covering the costs of prescription drugs.
“Father needed blood transfusion, but we were short of money. So I called Sanitek and asked for 30 000 drams, but they said they could not help me. They haven’t even checked up on him to make sure he is alive; he is their employee after all,” Ruzanna tells Epress.am.
“I went to Sanitek and asked for a meeting with the company’s director; but they rejected again, saying that I was on the ‘company’s blacklist.’ There are a lot of people on this list, and I’m sure they’ll support me should I decide to take the issue to court,” Ruzanna says, adding that she intends to fight not only for herself, but also for the other employees of Sanitek. “I don’t want this poor people to end up like my father. [Sanitek officials] need to bring order into the company. They throw the people to the streets at 9 am and force them to work to dawn. The work there is unsystematic and disorderly.”