“Turnover”: A newly-unemployed reflects on border-town life

Edik Baghyan, 63, a resident of Agarak on the Armenian-Iranian border, now has more time to cultivate his garden.He comes in the morning and leaves late in the evening, because the Copper Molybdenum Complex, where the 63-year old machine-operator had worked for 45 years, has stopped working due to the international economic crisis.“I am on a leave, but many have been made redundant, handed in their labor record books, and sent home. Will they call us back later? How will that be? All is unclear,” he says, digging his 500-square meter patch of land with a spade and sowing potatoes. This is how he is getting ready for the difficult year ahead. He thinks he has been saved, because he, unlike some of his plant colleagues, hasn’t taken a loan. “On the one hand, I was thinking of taking one, but I was afraid, and now, you see it’s good I have spared myself the trouble that many have now, because they have taken a loan and are in a tight situation.”

Out of work . . . except in the garden.“Who’s the owner now? The factory is not going to function cheered by chanting the motto ‘Forward, Armenia!,’ it may not work at all, who cares, who thinks about the people?” Baghyan is concerned about his own fate and that of his townspeople. He recalls that several years ago the Complex stopped functioning, but the people had other things to do. “At that time the customs’ office was new, the loads brought from Iran were required to be placed into Armenian cars, the workers were Armenian, we had jobs. Back then people collected scrap metal (and sold to Iranians, illegally), plus they kept goats and cows. “It’s true that people lost weight, got wrinkled, hunched up, but they didn’t die, they were able to survive. But now there are no metals, no customs’ office, what’s going to happen?” he sees no way out, “People are still hoping, some are on home leave, others still get a salary, but once they have received it and spent it, they’ll be paralyzed, it’s going to be very bad.” Baghyan recalls the years of living in the Soviet Union with painful nostalgia – at that time the activity of the Complex was supervised by the Kremlin, and nothing could disturb their quiet and prosperous lives then. “Then came the long-awaited independence. At first it was not good, starting from 1992, the cold and dark years, and for years the salaries at the Complex were very low. Many people kept goats, I did, too; there were 4 herds of goats in Agarak, and plenty of cows. Then, when the Complex began to function normally, people could not manage this, so they got rid of the cows and goats,” he says, in a brief history of his environment. “Three years ago we had a Russian manager, he tripled our salaries and hired a lot of people. It was very good, one may say our Agarak was prospering, people were buying houses, reconstructing, buyng cars on installment plans. And then this so-called crisis came about , the Complex stopped, and we don’t work. I don’t know, maybe it’s something artificial, maybe they are lying to us, and there is no such thing.” Baghyan says everyone in Agarak has land, but “if we rely on this land, we cannot live by it.”

“This is seasonal,” he explains, “In summer, for instance, there are vegetables, in autumn – fruit. But now, when it’s spring, what does this land yield? There is nothing from January to May, the tomatoes ripen only in June, then mulberry and sweet cherries; and the main fruit: apples, pears, pomegaranates, persimmons, figs – ripe in autumn.” “It is impossible to live by this land, it would have been possible if there was plеnty of land and if there was a government program for farmers, if they bought our produce, if there wеre factories,” he adds with regret. Baghyan calls independence an “overturn” and recalls with the same regret that before the “overturn” the fruit was taken by train to be sold at Yervan’s market. “The prices were good, it was very convenient.

Then, when this independence came about, the state in which nothing depends on anything came about as well, the prices of agricultural products went down a lot. For instance, I’ll give an approximate example, before we sold a kilo of peaches for 2-3 rubles and we could buy 1-1.5 kilos of meat for that money. Now you need to sell 10 kilos of peaches for 150 dram to be able to buy a kilo of meat,” he ends this comparison with laughter that transforms into sarcasm. The article was written with the assistance of The Institute of War and Peace Reporting (www.iwpr.net) as part of its coverage of Armenian issues.


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