Epress.am News from Armenia
Residents of the village of Parakar in Armenia’s Armavir province have been without drinking water for the past several days. On Wednesday morning around 5 dozen villagers blocked the Echmiadzin–Yerevan highway for about 10 minutes to protest against the cutoffs which regularly occur in the village during the summer months. They protesters insist that the drinking water they should be receiving is instead being provided to the greenhouses located at the beginning of the village. Parakar village head Samvel Vardanyan, in turn, told our correspondent that the water supply cutoff was due to breakdown of the village’s main supply pipeline; the issue, he argued, is not so serious and does not warrant extreme actions such as road-blocking.
Nearly 2000 residents of Parakar, a village with a population of 8533, have been deprived of their water supply without any prior notification. In response to the villagers complaints, the local water utility company, Veolia Djur, advised them to take up the issue with the village administration.
“We phone Veolia Djur and they tell us to deal with our issues at the village administration. The latter, in turn, tell us to apply to the water utility company. Veolia Djur says there is enough pressure to fill the reservoir, while the the village administration insists that the reservoir never fills up. In any case, the water gets lost somewhere in the village, and if there are no problems with Veolia Djur, then the issue must be coming from within the village,” protester Inga Sahakyan told Epress.am.
Villager Ashot Mikayelyan is also convinced that Veolia Djur provides Parakar with enough water, while the village administration distributes it poorly across the village: “The water is not distributed proportionately. Each neighborhood, for example, should have a 7-hour supply; but part of the village has water for 24 hours, while the other is left with no water at all. The first part of the village is inhabited by the employees of the village administration; none of them leave in the neighborhoods which are constantly deprived of water. The village head has the authority over the water distribution.”
The disproportionate water distribution, according to protester Borik Adamyan, has also to do with the many greenhouses in the village which use drinking water for watering their crops: “There are nearly 10 people in Parakar who have greenhouses: they never use irrigation water because it brings over unwanted weed seeds. Removing weeds takes up time and additional expenses, and they don’t want to deal with that.”
After the morning protest action, the villagers said, a spokesperson of Veolia Djur phoned them to assure that the water cutoff was due to a system breakdown and that the supply would be turned back on by Thursday morning. If the promise is not fulfilled, the protesters intend to go back to blocking the highway.
Speaking to Epress.am, Parakar village head Samvel Vardanyan said the villagers had been having water issues “only over the past couple of days; besides, the cutoff has affected not 2000 but 120 people at most.”
Commenting on the allegation that the village administration was not distributing the water proportionately across the village, Vardanyan said: “Water distribution is the responsibility of Veolia Djur; it does not sell water to the village administration, so the village administration cannot sell water to individual villagers. Veolia Djur distributes the water and collects the money for it.
“The claim that the drinking water is being used by greenhouses is also a complete lie. There is only one 1-hectare greenhouse in Parakar. It’s huge, and we would never have enough drinking water to water this greenhouse; it uses a drip irrigation system. The idea that the drinking water is being given to greenhouses has been planted by provocateurs to stir up the situation. We do have a water issue, but it does not warrant blocking roads.”