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• Clean Armenia: Government-backed countrywide campaign tackles trash

Cleaning up Yerevan with new and more trash cans is easy but littering laws must be enforced also. When a guy throws a pack of cigs or paper out of his car window, fine him immediately. The main cleanup should be in the towns and villages outside of Yerevan. The amount of garbage cans in these towns and villages are minimal, with clean up taking place once a week. The main issue are the street ...

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First events under the Clean Homeland program were staged in Yerevan last weekend with the help of activists of a youth movement, Miasin (Together). Officials promise Clean Homeland will be an ongoing campaign encompassing all locations in Armenia.

Littering is common in Yerevan and elsewhere in the country. Despite calls from city authorities and environmentalists many residents still continue to dump waste in undesignated places spoiling the sanitation of the town and creating public health risks. Sparse green zones and water basins, such as Hrazdan Gorge, are particularly vulnerable to littering.

The first mention of the campaign was made on May 17 when at a government meeting Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan said he had received a letter from the Miasin public movement calling for a “clean Armenia.”

Miasin, a pro-government youth group, was set up in February 2008 amid the turbulent post-election times to show support for Serzh Sargsyan, the current president and leader of the governing Republican Party of Armenia (RPA).

Premier Sargsyan, who joined the RPA last November, last month urged all state departments to take part in the campaign.

“The program starting in Yerevan will later spread to all provinces of Armenia,” the premier said, adding that the ecology minister would be in charge of providing detailed information regarding the activities.

While the issue of littering has been raised at the government level, authorities in Yerevan continued to stay busy throughout the spring months, implementing various activities to spruce up the city – from installing public and individual dustbins for businesses, to planting and pruning trees, asphalting streets and painting lampposts.

A year after Yerevan’s municipal elections won by the RPA, many residents in the capital, especially its central part, acknowledge the work being done by the Republican mayor.

“Well, slowly their work is becoming visible. There are even places where they got yards asphalted as well. Of course, they sobered up only after the city’s green had been destroyed, but it is better late than never,” says Aram Arakelyan, a 65-year-old resident of Yerevan.

A total of 125 hectares of forest areas of common use will have been created in the city this year under the Green Yerevan program announced by Mayor Gagik Beglaryan. Of these areas, 100 hectares will be in the city’s southeastern Erebuni district, 15 hectares in northwestern Ajapnyak and 10 hectares in southern Shengavit. For this purpose, the municipality plans to have up to 14,000 meters of irrigation networks installed in these three districts alone. Another 20,000 meters of irrigation water networks are expected to be installed in other districts of the city under the 2010 programs. The networks will take care of nearly 840 hectares of green areas.

Bus stops in Yerevan have been visibly revamped this year. According to the Yerevan Municipality’s Information and Public Relations Department, the work on bus stops is implemented by a company called A.D.V. Media S in accordance with a contract signed with the municipality’s Yerevantrans Company.

A.D.V. Media S Director Artur Karapetyan says the company has several groups and while some of them monitor the situation on the bus stops and clean them, others provide repairs whenever it is necessary.

Under a new program, 370 new bus stops will be added to the 298 already functioning in Yerevan.

Asphalting of streets began in Yerevan after the end of a long period of spring rains. The mayor’s office says nearly one million square meters of roads and other territories in the capital will be asphalted this year. About 60 percent of the project will target streets and the rest yards near residential buildings.

A total of 12 organizations have contracts with the municipality to implement refuse collection in Yerevan. In recent weeks new trashcans have emerged in the city center. Those are provided to offices to use to dump their waste, which will be regularly removed by the refuse collection service. While these trashcans are provided for free, offices are responsible for their condition and will have to compensate their damage.

“Companies in charge of collecting garbage in different parts of the city organize their work themselves and try to make it as effective as they can,” Mayor’s Office utilities department head Gagik Khachatryan explained to ArmeniaNow.