Opposition councilor accuses city authorities of neglecting Yerevan district

An opposition councilor in Yerevan has accused the city authorities of abandoning one of the capital’s districts, leaving residents in “inhumane conditions”.

Mesrop Manukyan, a member of the Mother Armenia faction in the municipal council, toured a crumbling apartment block in the Malatia-Sebastia district, officially classified as third-degree emergency housing. He said the city’s multi-million dollar budget was failing to reach the Haghtanak neighborhood, where residents complain of broken infrastructure and piles of construction waste.

“People pay property taxes, but what do they get in return?” Manukyan asked, urging ruling party MPs Vahagn Aleksanyan and Gevorg Papoyan to visit the site. He accused them of making promises during election campaigns but abandoning residents afterward.

“We believed them and voted for them, but now we’ve lost all trust. This is not living, it’s just surviving,” he quoted a local resident as saying.

Manukyan also criticised Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, questioning how billions of dollars in state borrowing had failed to improve basic living conditions in the capital. “Yerevan has become an open landfill,” he said, calling on the government to invest in repairing streets and housing rather than boasting of budget surpluses.