Most Fined Citizens Refuse to Pay for Not Wearing Masks

Since the declaration of a state of emergency in Armenia on March 16 until August 27, a total of 99,574 decisions for administrative penalties have been issued for not wearing masks. This was reported by the RA Police in response to an inquiry from the newspaper "Zhoghovurd." We requested information about how many individuals have been fined after the mandatory mask-wearing requirement and how many have paid their fines. The police response stated: "According to the RA Government decision No. 298-N dated March 16, during the declared state of emergency in the Republic of Armenia under Article 182.3, Part 1.1 of the RA Code of Administrative Offenses (for not wearing a mask), a total of 99,574 decisions on imposing administrative penalties have been made. A total of 12,100,000 dram has been paid into the state budget as fines."

Now let’s do a little calculation. The fine for not wearing a mask is 10,000 dram, meaning that 1,210 citizens have paid their fines, while decisions have been made against 99,574 individuals; thus, 98,364 citizens still owe the 10,000 dram fine. If everyone had paid their fines, the total amount would have reached 995,740,000 dram. It should be noted that according to data published on August 19, 66,530 administrative penalty decisions had been made, indicating a significant increase in the number of penalties within about ten days. However, despite the increasing number of administrative penalties, citizens do not seem to rush or desire to pay the fines,” writes the newspaper.

Read the full article in today's issue of the newspaper.