"We Are Drowning in the Smell of Trash and Decay; the Situation is No Longer Bearable": Residents of the 16th District

Residents of the 23 buildings in the 16th district of Yerevan’s Ajapnyak administrative area have been struggling for months with the unbearable stench of accumulated garbage and dead rats. Despite numerous calls and complaints from residents, both the municipality and the district administration have failed to find a solution for garbage collection in their building and the surrounding areas.

In an interview with Tert.am, resident Mariam Khachatryan expressed her distress, stating that they live on the first floor and have lost the ability to sleep due to the unbearable odor. "We are drowning in the smell of trash and decay. We have been going crazy from this stench all summer. It’s not like there was perfect garbage collection before either; perhaps for a year, Sanitek has barely done decent garbage collection in our building, but now it's unbearable. Probably they keep dumping rat poison, and the rats have died everywhere; wherever you sit, the stench comes. We are suffocating," she said.

According to Khachatryan, garbage has been collected only twice in the last couple of months, and not completely. "They didn’t do a thorough garbage collection to clean everything out, some of it remains. Garbage hasn’t been removed from the garbage chute’s ‘bunker’ for months, and the chute itself is clogged. After numerous requests to the municipality, they came around 10 days ago with excavators and took some garbage, but the garbage inside the building’s chutes has remained clogged for over a month. In other words, they took the trash that people had brought and dumped around, while the waste from the chute, which comes and fills up, has been left behind," she explained.

Khachatryan noted that she was forced to take the initiative to find a solution, organizing efforts among the residents. "I had to take the lead so that we could take action with our own resources, as we could not rely on them. We found people to come and open the blockage. They came yesterday, opened it, but those guys also said they won't go into the bunker to remove the trash. There’s no worker available; they simply don’t come, even for money. I’m not blaming anyone because they can’t go in there without a gas mask. Why should someone go inside to remove trash that’s been piling up for months without a gas mask or anything? That person is also at risk, right? I haven’t slept all night. My neighbor spent the entire night outside because of the smell," she said.

She mentioned that at first, the municipality offered some solutions, indicating the issue lay with Sanitek, but now they do not even respond to calls. "We have been calling the municipality endlessly, we’ve called our deputy too, and they say, ‘Yes, we will do it.’ Back then, they came and took some trash, but since then, they don’t even answer," Khachatryan said. It is worth noting that she has been paying for waste collection. "I paid six months’ worth of fees in one go, but if they say there are people who don’t pay for garbage services, and that’s why it’s like this, then they should impose fines on them. Or they should come and say that the pipe needs to be closed since we can’t find workers; close your pipe and decide where to put your trash," she stated.

According to Khachatryan, it's not just the garbage collection problem; the situation in all other areas is even worse. "The situation is worse now than before; they pretend to have started watering green spaces, but the pipes are leaking, and the water is going to waste instead of watering. The entire park is in terrible condition, every tree that was there has dried up completely; it’s heartbreaking to see what’s happening. I can’t even mention what happened in past years, but this year is extremely bad," she said.

In an interview with Tert.am, Yerevan Mayor's spokesperson Hakob Karapetyan noted that they are aware of the issue and are trying to find solutions. According to him, according to the existing contract, it is Sanitek’s responsibility to clean all of Yerevan's waste. "The situation you mentioned is a glaring fact of Sanitek’s failure, and these failure cases are widespread. Moreover, Sanitek has recently worsened its performance, which is almost reduced to zero. Thanks to the municipal sanitation and cleanup services, the city is currently able to avoid a waste collapse, and additional resources have been engaged to clean those waste pipes, which are supposed to be handled by Sanitek according to the contract," he stated.

Karapetyan added that municipal services currently lack the resources to specifically clean the bunkers and waste pipes. "They are cleaning the garbage bins, and the shortcomings of Sanitek’s work are felt precisely in those waste pipes, especially in the administrative districts where there are many buildings of this kind," he said, adding that they will try to find a solution through the district mayor for the specific address mentioned.