The employees of the most popular Ashgabat shopping centre Yimpas have been notified about the forthcoming terminations starting from 23 December 2016. Some of them have already been dismissed.
The dismissals are linked to the closing of the supermarket.
At the moment there is no reliable information on the further fate of the shopping centre.
As of today there are several versions:
• A person close to the higher-ranking authorities would like to take over Yimpas;
• The external appearance of the building does not appeal to the President as it does not fit into the overall architectural design of the city and the mall will be knocked down;
• Yimpas will be replaced with a new shopping centre;
• A new parking lot will be built instead of Yimpas.
On Friday, 9 December, the stores in the shopping centre sold out the remaining merchandise. Discounts reached 70%. There are no new arrivals on the shelves.
Huge queues formed at the cash registers despite the fact that all 19 checkouts were working. Even at 10 p.m. people were still coming to the shopping centre and hastily buying the remaining merchandise.
The café, billiards club and children’s amusement rides located in the shopping centre have not been operational in the past few weeks.
At the same time, there are no official reports about the closing. The administration of Yimpas Holding refused to give any comments to Radio Azatlyk.
The shopping centre employed over 400 people.
