The Prosecutor General’s office did not launch any criminal proceedings regarding the Yerevan bus drivers’ strike in early December, following which city authorities submitted a report about the strikers’ alleged crime to the Prosecutor General.
The update on the case came on Wednesday, with the Prosecutor General’s office telling RFE/RL that no criminal proceedings have been brought.
‘More simply, the investigator did not see any criminally punishable actions in the drivers’ strike,’ RFE/RL wrote.
On the day of the strike, 3 December, Deputy Mayor Suren Grigoryan announced that he had submitted a report to the Prosecutor General about the strikers’ alleged crime.
The municipality’s spokesperson, Hayk Kostanyan, said that ‘a large number of drivers’ joined the strike without prior notice, which is demanded by the law.
Apart from this appeal, Yerevan authorities dismissed 32 drivers in response to the strike. Only 11 of them have since been reinstated to work, a move that was heavily criticised online, as many pointed out that labourers have a right to hold strikes.
The striking drivers told reporters that aside from demanding pay raises, they were protesting against the lack of toilets on the job, having to purchase their own uniforms, and having to personally clean their buses. They said that the authorities had promised to address their demands in November.
However, the Yerevan city government viewed the strike as blackmail, and despite admitting that some of the issues raised by the bus drivers were ‘objective’, the city noted that the drivers had not raised those issues before ‘because they had side income’.
The introduction of a unified ticketing system, which allows passengers to purchase tickets through terminals on the bus instead of directly paying the drivers, has reduced the drivers' chances of skimming from the fares to obtain side income, which has reportedly been a common practice.
