Azernews.Az

By Abdul Kerimkhanov

The generous adventures of the Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan continue. The way the new team under his leadership boldly fritters away budget funds has long ceased to be a secret, but PM does not intend to stop.

Armenian media leaked records that Pashinyan secretly ordered in July 2019 to raise salaries of ministers, deputy ministers and senior secretaries of the ministries.

To verify information about the secret order, a written request was first sent to three ministries. In response, data were obtained on the number of employees and payroll for May-August 2019. In some cases, a significant difference was noticed.

An additional request was sent to three ministers with questions about what kind of salary, bonus and other payments the minister received. It turned out that the Minister of Emergency Situations of Armenia Felix Tsolakyan, as well as the Minister of the Environment Eric Grigoryan received six million drams ($12,630) in this period. That is, their monthly salaries amounted to 1.5 million drams ($3,157).

A similar request was sent to Minister of Finance Atom Dzhandzhugazyan. However, the senior secretary of the ministry rejected to provide information on the salary of the minister.

The ministerial salary index in Armenia is 12, according to the law “On Remuneration of Persons Holding State Positions.” It means that a minister’s salary is rated at the base salary amount, which is 66,140 drams ($139.54), multiplied by 12. It makes 793,680 drams, ($1,670), including taxes.

However, the salary of ministers had almost doubled by secret order of Armenian PM without amending the law on remuneration.

This strange distribution of budget funds affected not only the ministers but also their deputies and secretaries of ministries. Instead of the statutory 562,160 drams ($1,186) the amount of salary totaled slightly over one million drams ($2,236). As for the senior secretaries of the ministries, instead of 595,260 drams ($1,255), they are now receiving 870,000 drams ($1,835).

Upon a request to Armenian PM's office, it was told that the issue had been resolved by a secret procedure and therefore the information was not subject to publication.

Obviously, a huge increase in salary, albeit non-official, causes irritation among the Armenian population. Pashinyan’s officials are an absolute disgrace and do not even hide the fact that they illegally receive an impressive bump in salary, which is not documented anywhere.

In such a situation, there emerges a question whether what salary Pashinyan receives. Since he is so generously rewarding his ministers, he is unlikely to forget about himself.

In the meantime, Armenian reporters sent a written request to PM’s administration asking why this process was secret. Armen Khachatryan, who is the acting head of the public relations department of the Armenian PM’s administration, stated: "The question you raised and the processes associated with it, as you noted, were secret, therefore, this information is not subject to disclosure."

Armenian political circles immediately gave negative assessment to emerging developments. Political analyst Gagik Hambaryan made a harsh statement, saying:

“For a year, Pshinyan’s unprofessional ministers have not carried out such a volume of work for which they need to be paid 1,500,000 drams. Why did the salaries increase, what kind of professional personnel were included in the government, who put their skills into the state system management?”

Hambaryan accused the Armenian authorities of betraying their principles: “The most heinous thing in Pashinyan’s action is that all this was done secretly. What accountability can be spoken of here? What open and transparent work style is there to speak of? Compared to their predecessors, they are doing everything in a much more impudent manner.”

He believes that all this is an elementary deception of society, to get into the pocket of the population.

“I don’t understand why Pashinyan appointed his relatives as ministers, who have absolutely no idea in these areas, why they double their salaries at our expense, and also don’t even inform. This is a shame,” Hambaryan said.

In turn, political scientist Grant Melik-Shahnazaryan also believes that Pashinyan’s statements and his actions diverge: “In fact, Pashinyan is guided not by transparency and full responsibility to society, but by political expediency and his political plans. That is, priority is not given to his declared values ​​and approaches, but to what best suits the interests of Pashinyan’s political team.”

Gagik Tsarukyan, an oligarch who heads the Prosperous Armenia parliamentary faction, stated that raising ministers’ salaries secretly from the people was an unacceptable step. “Doing it secretly is insulting both for deputies and for the people,” said Tsarukyan.

Thus, despite the change of the last government, Armenian people still face unfair budget expenditures. Amid fighting for a transparent and honest government, ordinary people again is no better off than before.

---

Abdul Kerimkhanov is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AbdulKerim94

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz