RESIDENTS OF COLLAPSING YEREVAN BUILDING WANT TO SEEK ASYLUM FROM RUSSIA
01.27.2014 17:07 epress.am
Several residents of 3 Sisakyan St. in Yerevan in the coming days
intend to appeal to the president’s office then march to the Russian
Embassy and surrender their Armenian passports, resident Lilit
Kocharyan informed Epress.am, saying they made the decision to leave
Armenia and seek asylum from Russia as a result of the municipality’s
incorrect allocation of apartments.
“First, we refused city hall; the next step will be to ‘refuse’
this country – let them be ashamed that they’re playing games with
people’s lives. The building is collapsing day by day; worms and
fleas are filling our apartments with the wastewater; all the walls
are soaked with sewage. And it’s not enough that we’re living with a
thousand diseases and infections, city hall says, wait till May 2015,
[then] we’ll resolve the housing issues. They issued a document that
residents living in the emergency block [the part of the building
most damaged] need to be evacuated immediately; meanwhile, city hall
provided apartments not to the residents of the marked block but to
the residents from the other, opposite wing,” Kocharyan said.
The disgruntled residents intend to ask the president’s office
to create an expert commission to prove that the apartments were
allocated incorrectly.
Kocharyan said they are more angered by the approach of the employees
of the administrative district, who advised the residents “to complain
less; instead, go rent an apartment.”
“I asked if I go to live in a rented flat for a year and a half,
will you pay my rent? He says no. Or, if I left the house, from whom
will I demand it?” she said.
Note, the building with 126 units has been considered a “level 4
emergency” building since 2003, and only recently has the municipality
provided homes to 25 of the 104 families, telling the rest to wait
till May 2015.