30 More Communities Added to the List of Border Communities Receiving Social Assistance

In Armenia, an additional 30 border communities are being added to the list of areas receiving social assistance. According to a report by Armenpress, Deputy Minister of Labor and Social Affairs David Khachatryan announced this during a meeting of the National Assembly's Standing Committee on Financial-Credit and Budgetary Affairs, in the context of discussing a draft proposal authored by MP Artak Manukyan, which seeks to expand the list of those eligible for compensation for deposits made in the Armenian Development Bank. This proposal aims to include participants of combat operations in the Armenian armed forces and individuals affected by shelling of land areas in border communities as of August 1, 2014.

“On February 3, we brought forward a draft government decision to change the volumes of social assistance provided to border communities, the compensation procedure, and the list of communities receiving compensation,” the deputy minister stated. He mentioned that this addition, alongside the 38 existing border communities in four regions, is a consequence of the ramifications of the war, specifically in the Syunik region.

According to Khachatryan, approximately 2.4 billion drams have already been compensated under that article for the 38 border communities as of December 20, 2014. The number of beneficiaries has been around 17,000, with an average compensation of about 140,000 drams per beneficiary. The number of border communities is expected to increase by roughly 75 percent. Therefore, it can be roughly calculated that an additional 1.8 billion drams will be subject to compensation.

He urged MP Manukyan to postpone the project, and the author agreed to delay the discussion for two months.