VIDEO: Government Funds are Wasted, Says PM Pashinyan on Road Conditions

Not all projects funded by subsidy allocations have been effective. This statement was made by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan during today’s government session, where he asked Minister of Territorial Administration and Infrastructure Gnel Sanosyan to present the extent of the funds spent.

The Minister noted that the subsidy programs for the years 2021, 2022, and 2023 (for which additional funds were allocated during this session) are already underway or completed. According to him, the government approved a budget allocation of 2 billion 228 million AMD for the additional financing of 26 subsidy programs in 20 communities across 8 provinces.

Prime Minister Pashinyan then began to list the 26 programs one by one. He expressed several observations regarding the executed projects, stating that he is often dissatisfied with the quality of some of them.

“For example, we open a park, we plant flowers and shrubs, and six months later, you say, ‘Let me see what’s there,’ and you go in and find that there are 2 meters of weeds grown. If we are building a park that, as they say in Dilijan, is going to become a weed outbreak in a year, then what are we doing this for? We are doing it for the people, right? We are not just opening it for a show or for the sake of Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube news releases,” said Pashinyan.

In Yerevan, drivers have faced issues with lane markings. The city hall provides a different perspective. “We open it, and after the first rain, we go there and see there is no road. It doesn't even appear that there was a well-marked road a month ago. After the first layer of mud, layers two, three, and four settle in, and that’s it, the road is gone,” he noted.

The Prime Minister stated that all of this means that funds from the Armenian budget have been placed under the mud, which is no longer of any use to anyone. Pashinyan warned that he will soon visit the communities where various projects have been carried out with the subsidy funds over the past three years.