Team members of ALTER’s Armenia partners visited the Syunik region of Armenia on May 23 and 24th. During the visit, team members surveyed both of ALTER’s project sites in the region and met with local authorities and private sector partners. These brief meeting introduced local partners to the specifics of the project and sought to lay the groundwork for product meetings during the visit of ALTER’s project partners in mid-June.
On May the 23rd, partners began the meeting with the Deputy Head of Kapan Community, Mr. A. Grigoryan. Mr. Grigoryan is also the head of the Kapan Resilience Team and will be the municipality’s point of contact for the ALTER project. He lamented during the meeting that, to this point, private public partnership in the field of DRM has been limited with the mining companies in and around Kapan communities. Overall, he voiced the municpality’s willingness to cooperate with ALTER such that partnerships can be established and have a positive impact on DRM strategy and implementation in Kapan.
Following this meeting, project partners met with Mrs Hasmik Mkrtumyan, Head of the Nature Protectoin Department of the Zangezur Copper Molybdenum Combine, CJSC. While the results of the meeting were limited, the partners were advised on the official application procedures for requesting technical data related to the tailing dams.
On May 24th, the Armenia team began with a visit to the ContourGlobal Goris office. There, the team met with Mr. Aram Yolyan, Production Manager, and Mr. Nerses Zalyan, Health and Saftey Manager. The meeting gave a brief introduction to the project and access to the hydroelectric facilities was requested. ALTER partners were given permission to take photos of the dams, but were informed that permission to enter the facilities would need to be given at ContourGlobal’s head office in Yerevan. The team arranged a meeting with ContourGlobal’s General Manager in Yerevan in the following week for more information.
Following the visit in Goris, the team visited the Sisian municipality to introduce the project there. The team met with the community’s Staff Secretary and Mr. Hayk Hakobyan, leading specialist of the municipality’s organizational department. During the discussion, it came to light that the community had completed a local government self-assessment, but that the results of the assessment were not acted upon. The municipality agreed to research the subject in preparation for a meeting with all of ALTER’s team members in June.
Beyond meetings, the team also visited all of the target sites in Syunik Mars. Pictures of each site can be found in the gallery to the right and have also been added to the site introduction page.
