VIDEO: “This issue will explode one day,” says Pashinyan

The Prime Minister of Armenia, Nikol Pashinyan, has addressed the quality of road construction: “We need to understand what it means to eliminate a deficiency. Suppose the road was built, and a pothole appeared there after 3 or 6 months. The contractor says, ‘Okay, I will go and eliminate the deficiency.’ He goes and covers that pothole. In five days, another pothole appears somewhere else. He says, ‘Okay, I will go and eliminate that one too.’ In seven days, again a pothole appears; five days later, another one...

And instead of roads, we have a collection of patches. Well, he says, ‘I have eliminated the deficiencies.’ This is unacceptable,” he stated.

According to the Prime Minister, the culture of eliminating deficiencies in the construction and road-building sector is dubious: “Even if that pothole has emerged for objective reasons, when filling it, it will either be above or below the actual surface of the road. How many times have I told you, Mr. Sanosyan? In Armenia, up until now, when one contractor finishes a section of road construction, the next contractor starts the next section, and there is no point where you can drive without feeling that a different contractor has worked on it... Regardless of how you want to drive, it is impossible not to feel that this was done by another builder. In some places, if you pay close attention, you can even say which contractor did which section. This is a problem. We are investing billions in this sector, but we are not investing in education. When we say, what will happen next, how will we learn? Do you know what kind of roads we were making near Stalingrad in 1943?”

According to the Prime Minister, this is a problem that will explode one day: “It cannot not explode; we either solve it or it will explode.”

He also stated that the State Oversight Service must conduct inspections from the day of construction to understand what has happened there.