It was an “interviewing” day in the NA

The Heritage faction managed to find cooperation point with one of the links of the government on one issue

 It was a busy day for the Heritage Party yesterday – the representatives of the party managed both to meet the US National Defense University National War College, and to address questions to the cabinet of the RA in the NA and also “to solve a problem”. So the Heritage faction leader Styopa Safaryan and Armne Martirosyan were the people who met the American delegation, among which were also the professors of the college and set of people from the analysts’ staff, and presented the position of the Heritage Party on the issues of “external hard environment, security problems, external and internal challenges of Armenia”.

Then in the parliament where the NA-cabinet traditional “interviewing” day was yesterday, the Heritage MPs reflected on the fields of health care, environment protection and agriculture. The faction MP Anahit Bakhshyan’s question related to “The Amendment Bill of the RA cabinet November 2 2006 11911-Ü decision” after examination of which the MP concluded, “In order to improve the quality and the affordability of the health services in the regions, for example, in Lori region the number of beds in several departments will twice decrease. It is written in the bill that after merging No 1 and 2 hospitals 4,300m² will become vacant, I would say become freed, 3,600m² in Berd, 12,000m² in Stepanavan region. 19,900 m² only in three cities. The bill assigns the Healthcare Minister to negotiate with the World Bank, in order to provide financial support for constructing the new building of “Vanadzor Medical Center.” According to A. Bakhshyan, a bill was suggested through which the government does not take care of the population’s health issues, but frees territory at the expense of the population’s health without going deep into the fact that the country has a disaster area, that there is a possibility of restarting military operations, and that as a result of the optimization of medical institutions we will lose much more than we have gained. The Healthcare Minister Harutyun Kushkyan answered the question explaining the decrease of beds with the change of the population number compared to the Soviet times. And the people who object against merging two hospitals, according to the Minister, are basically the heads of the medical institutions. Certainly, A. Bakhshyan was not satisfied by that answer and she stated about her intention to address the mentioned issues in written. The Heritage Party MP S. Safaryan’s question related to the yard territory of Sayat-Nova avenue, Nalbandyan, A. Petrosyan and Tumanyan streets where someone or some organization has fenced 9000m² to construct a high-rise building, because of which a lot of old trees with thick trucks were damaged; they have laid the foundation of a new building.  The fenced territory lacks the model of the building being constructed, the name of the constructing organization and other information necessary according to the law. In the MP’s opinion, it is not accidental, since according to the information they have, no public hearings were organized concerning another construction, it lacks the environmental conclusion about that, whereas the construction takes place in the verdurous territory and it will obviously have an environmental impact on the inhabitants of the buildings in the vicinity. Moreover, according to the Yerevan City Hall 23.03.2011 notice, “The projecting papers of the construction works in the above-mentioned yard territory have not been put together and coordinated yet.” The Nature Protection Minister of the RA Aram Harutyunyan confirmed that the construction works being done at the above-mentioned address lacked an environmental conclusion agreeing also that the construction works would, certainly, have environmental impact. He said that he was ready to work along with the Heritage faction to prevent such illegal actions. S. Safaryan in his turn guided by the principle “strike while the iron is hot” suggested that the Minister on Thursday, on that very day, visited the mentioned territory together with him and learned the situation on-site.