Migrants from Armenia tell about undeveloped NKR village (+video)

In the village of Ukhtasar, Askeran District of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR), there is not enough water to irrigate gardens and orchards; while the houses provided under the resettling programme are falling apart, local residents complain.

Vardtiter and Arthur Sargsyan moved to Ukhtasar from Armenia in 2001. According to Vardtiter Sargsyan, there are good living conditions in the village, "but there is no water to make these conditions really good." She said that drinking water is barely enough, but irrigation is a real problem. Because of absence of water for irrigation, they have to buy some vegetables in the marketplace from the cars arriving from the city, she said.

In order for people to be able to live off their own households, "it is necessary to create conditions for them," her husband Arthur Sargsyan believes. "And this requires the state approach and support," he said.

Alvard Mesropyan, a villager, said that in 2002 the NKR government invited her husband with family to raise the village of Ukhtasar.

"My husband ... did a lot for the village. But in 2014 he had a stroke, and he had to retire. As a result, they forgot about us," she said.

She told that their housing needs repairs: the floors are rotten, the walls are cracked, and the yard is in poor condition. The house of her daughter, who is a single mother, is unfinished, Ms Mesropyan has complained.

"We turned (to the authorities) asking to help us. There was a commission, we showed everything and offered to help us to finish our daughter's house so that we all move there and leave this one. But they've done nothing to help us," the woman has complained.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on August 2, 2019 at 03:40 am MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.