www.aravot.am inquired of Lilit Galstyan, the chairman of the Armenian National Educational and Cultural Union and a member of the education, science and culture issues standing committee of the former parliament, how she would assess the culture budget draft of year 2013.
Ms. Galstyan noted that it hadn’t been hard to foresee that the culture would be secondary this year, as it had been in previous years: “The spending on the field of education in the 2013 budget is absolutely far from being a development budget, taking into account the problems we have in the field. As for cultural dialogue, preservation of our cultural heritage and internationalization of the Armenian culture, the money to be spent on this is enough for a mere preservation budget copied and pasted from the previous year’s budget. I have always been sorry that employees of the field of culture are the most socially vulnerable group in the Republic of Armenia and their average wage continues to be at the same level as last year and if we add to this the inflation, crises and social challenges, we should assert that the situation is unacceptable.”
Lilit Galstyan is convinced that no reform can be carried out and no strategic problem can be solved, if an appropriate cultural policy is not pursued in the country, “The laws of the country will be in force, only if the moral foundation is ensured. And the aim of the cultural policy should be that.”
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The chairman of the National Union put forward digital data – for example, the financing in the category Leisure, Culture, Religion has been reduced to 18.045.2 million drams in 2013, whereas last year it was 22.779 million.
Lilit Galstyan is sorry that reconstruction or construction of houses of culture and clubs are not planned for 2013. In this sense, the picture is negative by 94.9 percent.
Gohar HAKOBYAN
