Samvel Alaverdyan, 38, a contract soldier and resident of the Malatia-Sebastia community of Yerevan, was killed in a shootout with Azerbaijani forces in Yeraskh on July 14.
After his death, the family remains in debts and loans. Samvel’s wife, Hasmik Alaverdyan, and her two minor children found themselves in a difficult situation, starving in poverty.
The state has not helped the family in any way so far. Even the expenses related to the funeral, which are legally covered by the state budget of the Republic of Armenia, are left to the family. Samvel was buried by his retired father and mother.
It should be reminded that, before receiving compensation from the Soldiers’ Insurance Fund, 700,000 (seven hundred thousand) AMD [equal to abut $1,400] is given to the families of the deceased serviceman to reimburse the funeral expenses. Another 1,400,000 (one million four hundred thousand) AMD is given to reimburse the costs the grave, preparation and installation of tombstones of the deceased soldier.
“Samvel Alaverdan’s family will not receive the 1.4 million drams, as he is buried in Yerablur military pantheon. But the family has to receive the 700,000 drams for the funeral expenses,” an official from the Department of Health, Social Protection and Veterans Affairs of the Ministry of Defense has said.
They said talso hat the Ministry of Defense is dealing with the already collected papers; as of why the Alaverdyans did not receive the 700,000 drams is a matter for other departments.
According to the department, there are even cases when one of the relatives of the victim receives the money but does not inform the others.
It is different in the case of Samvel Alaverdyan. His relatives were not given anything.
“I applied to the Ministry of Social Affairs; I was told ‘in a week’. Not a week, but 24 days have passed and there is no news from them,” Norayr Grigoryan, the deceased’s uncle, who helps Samvel’s wife with paperwork, told Forrights.am. He knocks the doors of state institutions.
In our previous post, we talked about the state of the family. After our publication, Hasmik Alaverdyan and her children were visited by journalists, individuals who helped in any way they could. “They helped us, some people brought us money, but I did not receive anything from the state,” says Hasmik.
She will send the children to school in September. Hasmik takes care of their needs by doing random work, she was a waitress in a cafe, a cleaner in the houses of the rich. Now, however, she has put all his work aside and is collecting documents so that she can receive compensation from the Soldiers’ Insurance Fund. The process stretches.
“At the moment, they drag and drag us here and there, this way and that way. I cannot collect them all. The paper about the family members is the most difficult one: the passport office must give a document, they want our address, but our address has changed. One of floors of the house has one address, the top floor where we are staying has another, but there are no registrations under this new address. We have lost the documents of the house; new ones must be obtained. There is no house plan. Also, the military unit must provide a document about the military route [of the husband]. My brother calls every day, they say come today, come tomorrow, and so on.”
It seems that it shpould not matter where the victim lived, whether he was registered at that address or not. These things do not stop him being a soldier who dedicated his life to the homeland. But it comes out that it is possible, and Hasmik’s life has turned into hell. On the one hand, the paperwork suffocates the family, on the other hand, the banks.
Samvel owed money to the banks, borrowed money for various household purposes, which he could not pay on time. Now everything is left to Hasmik.
When Samvel Alaverdan was shot in Yeraskh, Prime Minister Pashinyan spoke about the incident, the hero was honored with a minute of silence in the National Assembly.
Today, however, everyone has left the family alone with their grief.
Syuzan Simonyan