Susanna Petrosyan, Yerevan, exclusive to VK
From August 1, according to the decision of the Board of Elders of the previous convocation a new method of payment for parking on the streets is adopted, where there are red markings and special indicators. The fee per hour is AMD 100, per day - AMD 500, per week – AMD 1000 or about three dollars, and for the year – AMD 12,000 or $30. Free parking is permitted only for 5 minutes, otherwise AMD 5,000 will be charged.
Previously, except for some facilities, 90% of parking in Yerevan was free. Now it is planned to create 20,000 paid parking places to be equipped with video cameras. The tender for the organization of parking spaces was received by Parking City Service, which will get 70% of the total amount paid for the parking from the budget of Yerevan. The program aims at the better organization of transport, but such a high level of deductions in favor of Parking City Service has caused distrust arisen in the society to the transparency of the transaction, the mechanism of which can include payments under the table to the city authorities.
According to some observers, if the municipality lost 70 % of its earnings in favor of the company, someone powerful rules the Parking City Service. The experts even mention the name of the brother of President Serzh Sargsyan, former Member of Parliament Alexander Sargsyan.
The reflection of lack of confidence for the next decision of the authorities was the formation of the new civil initiative "We will not pay for illegal parking" in social networks, the members of which pledged to conduct consistent struggle with a new initiative of City Hall. "The decision on paid parking is illegal and does not follow the public interest. Public areas were provided by a private company, which will get 70% of the profits from the parking lots. The private company was provided a database of citizens with cars; the company plans to carry out videorecords, to apply penalties to citizens of Armenia, which is a flagrant violation of the Constitution and human rights”, the statement of the initiative says.
Recently, thanks to the struggle of civil initiatives the decision of Yerevan Municipality on a 50 per cent increase in tariffs for public transport was temporarily suspended. The struggle of young activists against harmful projects from an environmental point of view also had a success.
Such civic engagement is welcome, but frequent protests, despite some achievements, did not develop into a powerful protest movement, although the country has the necessary socio-economic base.
In general, the processes in Armenia gained cyclic form:
- The election of a certain level based on different technologies aimed at reproduction of the current government
- Protests from citizens about the election
- The futility of struggle and domestic political lull following this and followed by numerous promises of the authorities on the improvement of the socio-economic situation, which are usually not performed.
However, all that cycle has not been completed, as public discontent does not gain an adequate form of protest, and the explosions are localized, mainly involving the partial solution of a problem, whether this is the consequences of the disaster, the solution of social problems of individual groups of people and etc.
Perhaps the reason for this unfinished cycle was the frustration of people in the absence of results of the fight. The impact on the mood of society could be provided by the refusal of leaders of opposition parties, "Armenian National Congress" and "Prosperous Armenia", respectively, Levon Ter-Petrosyan and Gagik Tsarukyan, to participate in the presidential elections.
The second reason was the passivity of the opposition, which has no control prescriptions characterized by a systemic structure, nor by the organization of point actions aimed at solving any one problem.
Without this, the people themselves will seek ways out of the current situation in the country, and one of those ways is migration. According to the National Statistical Service, for the first 6 months of 2013 1 million 17,000 people left Armenia, and only 922,000 people came back. The negative balance - 123 thousand – is a 30% increase over the same period last year. Until the end of the year the deficit will decrease to some extent by the return of migrants who left for seasonal work abroad. But given the above statistics, we can already say that in 2013 the number of emigrants from Armenia will be about 80,000.
The rate of emigration is rising dramatically. According to official figures, in the last three years, about 200,000 people left Armenia.
