Outbound migration takes a toll on Gegharkunik’s largest village Vardenik

Outbound migration takes a toll on Gegharkunik’s largest village Vardenik –

 By GAYANE MKRTCHYAN

ArmeniaNow 

During this time of the year, in late fall, Armenian labor migrants, who leave the country in spring, start coming back. Most of them are from provinces. In terms of labor migrants the Geghrakunik province is among the leaders in Armenia. The destination for most Armenian labor migrants are the cities in Russia, such as capital Moscow, Tyumen, Perm, Nizhny Novgorod, and Volgograd. 

Among labor migrants, often with their families, are also people from one of the largest villages in Armenia, from Vardenik in the Gegharkunik province. Villagers from Vardenik, which is about 140 kilometers to the northeast of capital Yerevan, unable to overcome the socio-economic difficulties, leave their native village, some temporarily and some permanently.

In the Badalyans’ family from Vardenik three-generation members are sitting side by side: the grandfather, the son, and the grandson. This is a situation that you do not always come across in the village. The father, Andranik Badalyan, says that he returned from Perm a week ago.

“I was a labor migrant for 10 years. I drove a truck. I am very unhappy, the ruble has devalued, we barely get half the money we used to earn, 500-600 dollars. All of us are in a low mood. There is no point in staying either. We have to go and stay there as homeless people. I have to get up and start driving from five in the morning, 1,200 or 1,000 km a day. I stayed there for six months and I had been given nothing but noodles and pasta. I hadn’t been even paid, so I came back without money. And 90 percent of Armenian labor migrants are in the same condition. We don’t know what to do, we cannot even stay here, there’s no job in the village,” complains Andranik Badalyan.

Andranik’s father, 78-year-old Stepan Badalyan, swoops in the conversation: “In the Soviet times we used to get wages, bonuses… I worked in a car-driving school, my wife was a nurse in kindergarten, there was stone-processing factory in the village, lived a good life. Now this reality is only toil.”

The Badalyans have produced one ton of potatoes this year. Andranik’s wife Karine Badalyan says that they will sell them at a price of 100 to 120 drams (about $20 cents) per kilo, if the buyers get to the village. She complains of their lives, of working a lot, but earning little, of the difficult situation, in which farmers are, of loans and taxes.

Badalyans’ neighbor Zarik Nersisyan’s two sons and daughter, with their families, have been living in Moscow for already eight years, but Zarik says he is not going to leave the village.

“I do not like living abroad. My country, my home is here, which is the result of my whole life, of 40 years of effort. We have created it with working hard on the land. How can we leave it?” he says.

“Half of the population of Vardenik is abroad. How can we leave? Once you leave your house you cannot take a good care of your property. So we’ll stay and wait hoping that one day they’ll come back. They are there for earning their living,” says the woman’s husband Serob Nersisyan.

The spouses got three tons of potatoes from their 1,800-square-meter plot of land this year. They are waiting for potato prices to go up a little and to start selling their produce then. 

“I have produced potatoes, cabbages, whereas they import Turkish ones. Why don’t they let Georgians come and buy the potatoes? Is it fair? They spoil our potatoes,” Nersisyan complains.

They have bought two cows by a loan. They are trying to overcome the difficulties. However, there are a lot of expenses. 

“This year, a sheaf of hay for the cattle is 1,800 drams (about $4). One cow needs up to 90 sheaves of hay to live through winter. To plow a hectare of land they want 45,000 drams (about $95). They sometimes do it on credit. What can they do?” says Zarik Nersisyan.

From social problems shifting to politics, that is the constitutional referendum on December 6, they say with indifference that they are not interested in it at all.

Andranik Badalyan is sure that their voting makes a little difference. “I’m against. What do they think of the people? Our vote is of no value: they will elect the president they want, and will appoint the prime minster they want. They do it in a way which is profitable for them.”