It was revealed that revolutionary deputies received more than 580 million AMD in bonuses over the course of one year.
The revolutionary parliament accepted the implementation of the 2019 budget several days ago. A few revolutionary numbers remained unnoticed and forgotten among all the political events.
Starting with the service vehicles: of course, the number of service vehicles for deputies decreased with the new parliament, but, as people in the public say, did the revolution take place for this? The parliament decreased the number of cars to 22.
As the Chief of Staff of the National Assembly, Tigran Galstyan, told Aravot Daily, “The cars are meant to be used by the speaker, the vice speakers, the chairs of committees, and the chiefs of staff.” But as far as what happened to the other cars, they didn’t go far; they went back to the transportation park of the parliamentary staff. The amount of money spent on gas decreased. If 270,000 liters of gas were provided to the National Assembly in 2017 and 190,000 liters in 2018, then 108,000 liters were provided in 2019.
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Tigran Galstyan said that around nine cars were kept to be used in shifts. “Those cars are used upon request. An employee or deputy can issue the request and say where they are going and for how long. The appropriate amount of gas is given and they are used as shift vehicles.” Besides that, Tigran Galstyan said that there are also representative vehicles and buses that bring people to work in the mornings or that are used for special occasions.
The issue of service vehicles would not matter so much if former opposition deputy Nikol Pashinyan did not demand so much from the former employees. At the time, deputy Pashinyan had expressed his surprise that Denmark, which had a state budget of 120 billion USD, only had 23 service vehicles in its entire state system. Meanwhile, the Armenian parliament is number three worldwide in terms of the number of service vehicles it uses.
Aside from the service vehicles, the amount of money given to deputies in bonuses in the pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary parliaments is incomparable. As far as what the difference is between the bonuses given to the 6th and 7th parliaments, Aravot Daily asked the National Assembly. Between April of 2017 and April of 2018, the amount of money given in bonuses was 33,770,880 AMD. But after the revolution, between February of 2019 and February of 2020, the amount given in bonuses was 580,104,838 AMD.
Hripsime Jebejyan
“Aravot” daily
01.07.2020
