
Armenia: $1.7 Million for New School in Village with Twelve Students
Armenia is spending AMD 696 million ($1.7M) to build a school in Garnahovit, a village the country's Aragatzotn Province, that only has twelve school-aged pupils.
Lusineh and Sofi are two of them. All twelve now attend classes together, in one class.
Garnahovit is one of the thirty-three communities incorporated in the administrative district of Talin, a town with an estimated population of 5,500.
Work to build the school began in 2020 and was scheduled to conclude in 2023. Delays have pushed back the completion date.
Grigoryanshin LLC, the company contracted to build the school, has been fined for the delays and says work will be finished in 2025.
Talin administrative head Yeghishe Grigoryan tells Hetq that the village’s population has plummeted over the last two decades given the lack of work.
‘Young people work in Yerevan, Ashtarak, and in cities where they have had the opportunity to find work. Some of them settled in those cities and left our village," he says.
Most of the village’s forty-three families raise livestock. Few farm the land given the lack of an irrigation system.
The new school, envisaged to serve one hundred and fifty pupils, will also accommodate children from the neighboring villages of (Zovasar, Vosketas, and Karmrashen. It will also have a preschool. The goal is to revitalize village life.
The new school is aimed at revitalizing life in Garnahovit, which lacks public transport to the outside world.
“Almost every family in the village has a car. There is no point in having public transport. Transport came and went, no one used it. If necessary, the villagers also help each other, organize transportation. There used to be a student bus that transported students in the morning, but in recent years there aren’t enough students for the bus to work. Students studied well at the time, found jobs in the capital, and left the village,” Grigoryan half-jokingly notes.
The village lacks natural gas and a medical unit. There’s no nurse to staff it.
During a visit to the village, Hetq reporters saw a work crew laying gas pipes along the road. Grigoryan says natural gas will flow in 2025.
One bright spot is the village’s seventh century St. Gevork Armenian Apostolic Church. Renovated years ago, it’s now getting a new roof.
Write a comment