ANGER AS TRADERS CLEARED FROM YEREVAN STREETS
Naira Melkumyan
IWPR
August 23, 2011
UK
Authorities accused of victimising small businesses while leaving
large ones untouched.
The authorities in the Armenian capital Yerevan have begun demolishing
street stalls and kiosks, in what opposition politicians allege is
a step designed to protect large supermarkets from competition.
Workers backed up by police units dismantled several stalls in the
city’s Central and Arabkir districts last week, without even giving
owners a chance to remove goods from display.
Leva Hakobyan said he was ruined after losing the kiosk where he sold
souvenirs and cosmetics in Arabkir district.
“I took out a bank loan until 2015 to start a business. I’ve paid
all my taxes and kept up with the repayments all this time, but how
am I going to pay the bank now?” he asked. “This stall supports two
families. I have all the requisite documents and a license. How can
they just take our property and destroy it?”
The city authorities say they are not going to extend current
stallholder licenses, except for newspaper sellers. They argue that the
stalls and kiosks break planning rules and make the capital look ugly.
“If there’s an order to remove stalls on these streets, then that order
will be carried out,” city hall spokesperson Shushan Sardaryan said.
The campaign to clear street traders off the streets has been going on
since the beginning of the year, under mayor Karen Karapetian. (See
Yerevan Street Sellers Protest Trading Ban.) So far over 900 of the
nearly 4,000 stalls and kiosks have gone.
The issue has become politicised as opposition parties take up
the stallholders’ cause. The city authorities are dominated by the
governing Republican Party. (See Armenian Opposition Seizes on Street
Traders’ Anger.)
Opposition politicians say Karapetian’s predecessor as mayor gave
stallholders permission to remain until next year, so the current
administration cannot simply cancel that arrangement.
“They cannot deem that a document saying stalls in Arabkir district
can remain until 2010 is illegal. If the mayor says they were built
illegally, then everyone must answer for it, from the former mayor
downwards,” Stepa Safaryan of the Heritage party said.
Arevik Ghazaryan, who owns a flower stand on Mashtots Avenue, said
she had been assured she would have a guaranteed pitch until 2015
and had made her plans accordingly.
“We are asking them not to take our work away from us, not to create
unemployment, and not to bankrupt us,” she said. “Is the aesthetic
improvement for which the mayor has decided to destroy these stalls
worth depriving people of work and reducing their circumstances?”
Safaryan accused city officials of lulling stallholders into a false
sense of security by suggesting their premises would not be removed
immediately. They deny this, insisting they kept traders informed of
their plans.
The opposition Armenian National Congress, ANC, has accused the
government of eliminating competition on behalf of its allies in
big business.
A statement from the ANC said that there was a policy to “concentrate
trading in the supermarkets and large shops belonging to oligarchs”,
and that the authorities were ignoring the social consequences –
“the future of thousands of people, an increase in social tensions,
and extra impetus for emigration”.
The city authorities have insisted they are not against small
businesses. Mayor Karapetian told a government meeting that stalls
would only disappear from central streets where they blocked pedestrian
traffic or looked unsightly.
“I don’t think the owners of kiosks on central streets are
impoverished, so the mayor’s office has no obligations to them,”
he said. “There was a deadline… We don’t have to offer them an
alternative [site] or compensation.”
The mayor added that in cases where traders needed help, local
officials were under instructions to provide financial compensation,
job offers, or alternative sites.
At a recent meeting with stallholders, Arabkir district government
chief Edgar Musheghyan offered them new sites, but they dismissed this,
saying they would have to pay for the relocation out of their own
pockets, and the sites on offer would not attract any passing trade.
Armenia’s human rights ombudsman has stepped into the fray, saying
the demolitions were unlawful and marred by violations of human rights.
Among the concerns raised by the ombudsman’s office were the failure
to notify stallholders of demolitions in advance, and the use of
force by police drafted in to help.
The ombudsman urged the mayor’s office to remember that Yerevan
belonged to everyone, not just to the wealthy.
“Several recent urban renewal initiatives have had a negative effect
on disadvantaged sections of the population, and benefited only those
with a medium to high standard of living,” the watchdog concluded.
The Heritage party and the stallholders say they are considering
what to do next. This may include protests outside the offices of the
president and the city mayor. Heritage has also urged the speaker of
parliament to recall legislators from their summer break to debate
the issue.
Hovsep Khurshudyan, an analyst with the Armenian Centre for National
and Strategic Studies, says targeting street traders is manifestly
unfair.
“Of course the city should be beautiful and construction standards
adhered to,” Khurshudyan said. “But is it really only stalls that
affect this? What about big shops on the streets, or cafes in green
areas? Nothing gets done about them, and that’s because there are
big businessmen behind them. That’s double standards.”
Naira Melkumyan is a freelance journalist in Yerevan.