The issue of the personnel in the state management bodies continues to be an urgent question. Imagine, for example, an expert of the IT field, who gets one million drams “white” salary for his work. It is a very good salary for Armenia, though taking into consideration the current prices it is not, particularly, luxurious. The Prime Minister calls that expert and offers a post of a minister or a deputy minister with, let’s say, 400 drams salary. It can mean two things: either that person is told, “come, steal” which, I hope in case of this government will not happen, or “I will give you the 600 drams “shortage” in an envelope”. Where from? From skullduggery? Again from the money stolen from somewhere? Isn’t it the same? There is another option too, which is now used in case of many ministers. There come some wealthy people enriched in some (honest, dishonest, semi-honest) ways, who can spend their “stocks” for some years without losing.
But it is not a solution either. Suppose that those people will not take bribe, will not get into new businesses, will not establish fake PIUs (program implementation unit) or SNCOs (state non -commercial organization) and will honestly serve the state. And deputy ministers, heads of divisions, heads of departments? Majority of them are not millionaires like ministers and do not have stocks to spend. Of course, there will be people of ideology, patriotic young people like today’s Deputy Minister of Health. But to expect widespread altruism from those circles, I think, is naivety. If that head of the division sees that an ordinary customs official, an assessor, or a policeman of an average level drives an “S” class Mercedes, most probably, his enthusiasm will decrease.
They say in ” post-revolutionary” Georgia the Soros foundation gave salary to the officials so that they would not steal. Then Bidzina Ivanishvili was saying that he was giving that salary in the name of Soros. But it, in fact, is the same “black horseshoe”, the same “envelope” just seasoned with some foreign odors.
But if I now say that the salary of the state official should be raised (of course by decreasing their number so that additional expenses will not be required from the budget), the populists will eat me raw. But I do not see another way out. In the state apparatus everything should be transparent and controllable. But in that case people will come there to serve not to “smooth their affairs”.
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ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
