Prime Minister Karen Karapetian promised to improve the dire socioeconomic situation in Gyumri on Thursday as Armenia marked the 29th anniversary of a catastrophic earthquake that ravaged the city and other parts of the country.
But he declined to specify when the protracted reconstruction of the vast earthquake will be completed or how many new jobs will be created there in the near future.
“I can’t respond with time frames, but the quality of life in Gyumri will definitely change,” Karapetian told reporters after laying flowers at a local memorial to some 25,000 people that were killed by the 1988 calamity.
“We must work very hard every day so that life here changes, and it will change,” he said. “The problems facing Gyumri, our people are surmountable. We just need to look at them with optimism and work accordingly.”
“Every day we work on creating conditions for business to come here and create jobs, and we have a special infrastructure project,” he added.
Gyumri - The newly renovated Rustaveli Street in Gyumri, 18Oct2017.
Karapetian has frequently visited Gyumri since he became prime minister in September 2016. Early this year he initiated a $10 million reconstruction of its old town aimed at attracting many tourists to and stimulating economic activity in Armenia’s second largest city.
Gyumri is still beset by very high unemployment and poverty rates, however. According a local non-governmental organization, almost 2,400 local families still live in rundown “domiks,” supposedly temporary shacks that sprung up there following the earthquake.
Government officials say in this regard that 21,185 families in Gyumri have received new and state-funded housing in the past 29 years. They argue that this figure actually exceeds the number of families whose homes were destroyed by the 1988 quake. More than 700 families currently remain on waiting lists for new apartments drawn up by the municipal administration.
Armenia - Newly constructed apartment blocks in Gyumri, 15Oct2012.
Artur Khachatrian, the governor of Armenia’s northwestern Shirak province, of which Gyumri is the capital, suggested on Thursday that most people huddling in “domiks” are former residents of nearby villages that relocated to Gyumri after 1988. The state is not obliged to give them new homes, he said.
Levon Barseghian, an opposition member of Gyumri’s municipal council, insisted that that would not place a heavy financial burden on the state. He said that the government is able to solve the grave housing problem of those families within four years.