SALARIES OF JUDGES TO BE DOUBLED

ArmInfo
2008-11-27 12:58:00

ArmInfo. Today, the Armenian parliament passed the first reading of
a draft law ‘On salaries of employees of legislative, executive and
judicial power branches’. In addition, the parliamentarians discussed
amendments to the law "On Pocuracy" in the first reading’. Minister of
Labor and Social Issues Arsen Hambardzumyan said that the submitted
package stipulates determination of salary rates of general
jurisdiction judges in Armenia by the budget of the country. In
particular, a separate article concerning the amount of salaries of
general jurisdiction judges will be annually included in the Basic
Law of the country. A similar measure will be taken with respect to
prosecutors. The acting law stepped in on 1 July 2003, and since then
judges’ salaries have undergone no changes. In this connection, the
Armenian government suggests increasing their monthly salary. This
suggestion meets the government’s anti-corruption program. Moreover,
this will create an opportunity to form an independent and impartial
judicial system. In general, the matter concerns 216 judges whose
salaries will be increased to 440 thsd AMD as against the present
220 thsd AMD. For this purpose about 1 bln AMD will be allocated
from the state budget. According to the acting law, the salary of
the prosecutor general of Armenia is to make up 95% of the salary
of chairman of the cassation court, and prosecutors’ salary is to
be fixed in compliance with their positions. Now it is suggested
determining the prosecutor general’s monthly salary in a separate
item of the state budget 2009. To note, the prosecutor general’s
salary has considerably grown since 1 January 2008 while prosecutors’
salaries have undergone no changes since 2003. In this connection,
it is suggested considerably increasing the salaries of prosecutors
since 1 January 2009. Meanwhile, independent experts think that the
measures suggested by the government are not enough.

Alongside with twofold increase of judges’ salaries, it is also
necessary to introduce relevant amendments in the Criminal Code
stipulating life imprisonment without a right to amnesty for the
judges caught in bribery.