Yerevan mayor moves to revoke licenses of littering urban developers

Yerevan Mayor Tigran Avinyan told City Hall staff on Monday to develop a method for revoking construction licenses for developers who litter.

Avinyan made the suggestion after a report revealed a large quantity of construction garbage in the area of the Luyser Residential Complex in Yerevan’s Malatia-Sebastia district.

A City Hall staffer informed the mayor that 60 cargo trucks have been removing the garbage from the site over the past three days, but much still remains. The volume of waste was so great that nearby construction companies offered their assistance to City Hall.

However, Ruben Khojoyan, Deputy Director of the Department of Urban Development and Land Supervision, told the mayor at Monday’s executive meeting that the construction waste was not left by the nearby developers, and that other “entities” were responsible.

Yerevan Mayor Tigran Avinyan stated that it is first necessary to identify the “careless” developers and hold them accountable. “Once identified, we need to find a way to completely revoke their building permits—let them go bankrupt. If they are so careless that they dump construction waste wherever they please, their permits must be canceled. I ask that legal methods be studied—I am confident such methods exist. If we decisively cut off a few of them, I am certain this problem will disappear,” Avinyan said.

Khojoyan also reported that one of the developers near the Luyser neighborhood offered to install cameras so that, in case of recurrence, the responsible parties can be identified.

“Mr. Khojoyan, I am instructing you to identify the specific developers who are dumping construction waste in unauthorized locations. Present their names to me, and we will decide how to handle them,” Tigran Avinyan concluded.