{"id":280785,"date":"2017-05-23T18:37:38","date_gmt":"2017-05-23T14:37:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/epress.am\/?p=280785"},"modified":"2017-05-23T18:37:38","modified_gmt":"2017-05-23T14:37:38","slug":"sanitek-victims-refute-companys-refutation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2017\/05\/23\/sanitek-victims-refute-companys-refutation.html","title":{"rendered":"Sanitek Victims Refute Company’s Refutation"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Seven employees of the Sanitek Armenia waste management company have been in various types of accidents while on duty since the beginning of 2017, Sanitek’s press service said in response to an Epress.am inquiry, making it clear that Sanitek does not believe any of the accidents have occurred due to the company’s fault.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reasons for all of these cases are completely different: in some cases there was inattention or omission on the part of the employee; in another case, the [accident occurred] to the fault of a third party,\u201d the answer claims, pointing out that since the work in the field of waste management is not easy, problems and minor incidents are unavoidable.<\/em><\/p>\n

The stories told to Epress.am by the affected employees, however, paint a quite different picture of the events than that given by Sanitek.<\/p>\n

41-year-old Karmen Abgaryan<\/a><\/span><\/strong>, who was hit by a car as she tried to cross the street to carry out her duties, for instance, claims that Sanitek employees are always forced to work overtime. On the day of the accident, according to the woman, she was made to stay and clean the roadway on Yerevan\u2019s Heratsi street after her shift had ended because mayor Taron Margaryan\u2019s motorcade was expected to drive by the area.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got off the minibus and had to cross the street. The traffic had already begun, but we could not use the above-ground passway because we had to be exactly at the center of the street. I was hit by a car when crossing the street, and if it weren\u2019t for the other cleaner, who managed to grab my arm and pull me back, the consequences would be much graver for me,\u201d Abgaryan said.<\/p>\n

Volodya Achemyan<\/a><\/span><\/strong>, a 65-year-old member of a Sanitek garbage pickup crew, was hit by a car on Yerevan\u2019s Baghramyan-Kievyan intersection in late March. \u201cYou can just stand there and watch how the job is being done: the cars are standing in two rows, so there really isn\u2019t a place for the Sanitek truck to park. It therefore parks in a third row, leaving the other cars with no way to pass and blocking the drivers\u2019 view of the road,\u201d Achemyan told Epress.am, stressing that he was standing on the roadway when he was hit by a car.Epress.am inquired of Sanitek whether the company tends to take measures to ensure a safe working environment for its employees.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe company periodically carries out explanatory work with all its employees to ensure that safety rules are obeyed,\u201d Sanitek’s answer says, insisting that in all cases of security breaches the company takes appropriate measures, and sometimes even imposes disciplinary actions.<\/em><\/p>\n

Both Abgaryan and Achemyan, meanwhile, claim that the company rarely takes measures to create safe working conditions for the employees.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey told us to just go and do our job. When the company had only opened, we were told that we would not have to go further than 75 centimetres into the roadway, but now we are forced to go 3-4 meters,\u201d Abgaryan says.<\/p>\n

Volodya Achemyan, for his part, points out: \u201cSanitek does nothing to protect the workers\u2019 safety. This is not the first such incident to happen in Sanitek; not a single day passes without someone getting into some kind of trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sanitek comments on the incident with Achemyan in the following way: \u201cWithout going into too much detail, we just want to note that this is a classic example of an accident, from which no one is protected. The accident involving Volodya Achemyan occurred during his working hours, but it was not caused by a breach of safety rules. A citizen hit our employee with a car while he was standing near a Sanitek truck.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Volodya Achemyan’s daughter, Ruzanna<\/span>, insists that since the accident, they have received no help from Sanitek, except for the medical insurance envisaged by the labor contract.<\/p>\n

\u201cFather 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\u2019t even checked up on him to make sure he is alive; he is their employee after all,\u201d Ruzanna said.<\/p>\n

The woman also told us that Sanitek has been refusing to re-hire<\/a><\/span><\/strong> her as a cleaner, insisting that the woman has been \u201cblacklisted\u201d by the company. 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had only been working at the market for a week when Sanitek officials came for us\u2026 They were filming the entire process, as if we were some kind of criminals. It\u2019s not like they were paying me 500 dollars \u2013 I couldn\u2019t 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\u2026 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,\u201d Ruzanna noted.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a clear reason for this: a group of employees, including Volodya Achemyan’s daughter, went to the city of Masis and carried out a range of cleaning activities during their Sanitek working hours, weraing the Sanitek unifor and using Sanitek tools. After learning about this, Sanitek, which pays its employees for the proper performance of their duties, dismissed all those who had shown such an approach, having every reason to do so.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cAs for the company’s employees taking on a second job, Sanitek has no right to oppose or prohibit its employees from working in other structures. Moreover, there are many employees who parallelly work several places. The blacklist you have mentioned is comprised not of the employees who have a second job, but of those who tried to deceive the company, harming both the working process and the company’s reputation,\u201d Sanitek’s response to Epress.am says.<\/em><\/p>\n

Ruzanna Achemyan, however, denies the above-mentioned. The photos that Sanitek representatives took when they came for them to their second workplace, she adds, can also prove that the employees were not wearing Sanitek uniforms either.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Without going into too much detail, we just want to note that this is a classic example of an accident…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":280779,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280785"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280785\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}