Remove the Regional Governor and the Responsible for Environmental Protection and Initiate Criminal Proceedings: Hrant Bagratyan

Remove the regional governor and the responsible for environmental protection and initiate criminal proceedings. This was stated by former Prime Minister of Armenia, Hrant Bagratyan, on his Facebook page, addressing the issues of greening Lake Sevan and those responsible.

“The greening of Sevan has affected all of us. There may be several reasons: sewage, rising water levels, ecological imbalance, and so on. Or perhaps all of these combined. Let me talk about the latter. When an uncontrollable amount of fish is caught from the lake, algae blooms. This happens because the flora starts to prevail over the fauna. Such experience, albeit much milder, we have also encountered. Usually, this occurs during intensive poaching,” he noted.

“Only this year, I have traveled to Artsakh three times via that route; people openly offer fish just 50-100 meters away. Right next to them, in open ponds, are dozens or up to 100 kg of fish. Such corruption has never existed. In our time, the Ministry of Internal Affairs conducted at least monthly raids. There has always been theft, but now it has reached the point of cynicism.”

“Additionally, I would urge the government to publish the quantity of juvenile fish introduced into the lake over the past five years (including the first half of those years). We are talking about the farms on Sevan and a few other private fish farms. It is possible that there is simply no fish in the lake, or there are very few,” Bagratyan emphasized.

“The situation is exacerbated by the fact that new Chinese nets also catch juvenile fish. Some of the dishes in restaurants made from juvenile fish are simply astonishing. The lake may be restored, but if poaching is not regulated, it will green the lake one day. And that day will be irreversible. I also believe that both the regional governor and the person responsible for environmental protection (there was a minister, now I'm not sure who it is) should be removed from office and criminal proceedings should be initiated,” Bagratyan concluded.