The Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs is initiating several steps to increase the poverty threshold and to review the amount given in pensions. Particularly, several budgetary issues will be reviewed. Acting Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Mane Tandilyan spoke to reporters about this. “We need to review the social system,” she said.
“We are taking steps to decrease poverty. Perhaps there are some revolutionary ideas surrounding this issue, which I will speak about later, because the public is used to direct monetary allocation instead of special services to help regain self sufficiency. This is a philosophy that is not clear for society yet,” she said.
Speaking about data that shows that 30 percent of Armenian society is in poverty, Mane Tandilyan said that the ministry wants to decrease the poverty threshold by 0.5 percent each year. “We are still discussing this. We need to be open-minded. What we are doing does not only apply to the social sector, but to the economy overall. There are ways to initiate this, but we are still discussing them.”
Luiza Sukiasyan
