More Than 1.7 Million Dram Allocated for Parliament Staff's Clothing, Says Aregnaz Manukyan

More than 1.7 million dram has been allocated for the clothing of the National Assembly staff. This was reported by Aregnaz Manukyan, a deputy of the 'Armenia Alliance' group, on her Facebook page.

Since January 17, 2022, during the sessions of the third session of the eighth convocation of the National Assembly of Armenia, some female employees of the parliament have begun to appear in similar special uniforms. I had sent an inquiry to the acting Chairman of the National Assembly, Hakob Arshakyan, inquiring about:

1. By whose decision have the NA staff members begun to wear special uniforms?
2. Who specifically is wearing these uniforms?
3. With which company has the contract to produce these uniforms been signed? Who owns this company? When was the aforementioned contract signed, for what period, and what services is this company supposed to provide? How much has been allocated for this service, and from what budget?
4. Is there a plan to expand the list of uniform wearers? If so, which employees and starting from when will be required to wear these uniforms?

In response, Vahan Naribekyan, the head of the NA staff, stated that the employees servicing the parliament sessions wear special uniforms on his assignment.

“The service provision contract was signed on December 15, 2021, with the company ‘Nikolyan’ LLC. The aforementioned company was commissioned to provide jackets, trousers, shirts, and skirts for the employees servicing the National Assembly sessions. The total amount was 1,716,000 AMD, which was allocated from the NA budget,” he said in his response. There is currently no decision to expand the list of uniform wearers, he noted.

Regarding who owns this company, the head of the NA staff did not specify. According to my knowledge, ‘Nikolyan’ LLC belongs to Aram Nikolyan, who is the chief stylist of the Public TV and also designed the outfit for Malena, the Armenian representative for the ‘Junior Eurovision 2021’ song competition.

Additionally, I have information that a contract was also signed with ‘Elamoda’ LLC, and 45 uniforms, 52 shirts, and 40 pairs of shoes were purchased for certain NA staff members. The total amount for this contract was 1,122,000 dram. The NA also purchased clothing and shoes from ‘Elamoda’ LLC in 2019 for 857,960 dram. The shareholder of ‘Elamoda’ is Elbak Hovsepyan.

It seems that we have sung all the songs, except for ‘the poppy of the mountain,’ and there are no other urgent and primary problems to solve in our country than to buy clothes and shoes for the NA staff and waste millions of dram for this purpose. Although there is nothing surprising about it. If the current Chairman of the NA, Alen Simonyan, and some questionable-financed members of the ‘My Step’ faction are vacationing on an expensive Greek island, then others might order clothing and shoes at the expense of the state budget, raising suspicions of ‘kickbacks’,” the details read on the website.