National Assembly passes in second reading draft law on local
self-government in city of Yerevan

YEREVA N, DECEMBER 26, NOYAN TAPAN. The RA National Assembly on December
26 passed in second reading the draft law on local self-government in
the city of Yerevan and, based on it, the legislative package
envisaging amendments to 22 current laws and codes. The darft and the
package were adopted with 95 votes in favor and 6 against. The members
of "Heritage" faction voted against the package due to the government’s
rejection of the principled proposals made by the faction, including
the proposal on order of mayor’s election.

The parliament passed in first reading the government-submitted package
of amendments to the Law on Licensing and the Law on State Duty. The
package envisages including the technical control of construction
quality and the technical examination of buildings and structures in
the list of activities subject to licensing. It is proposed that the
annual state duty for licensing of the two above-mentioned activities
should be fixed at 50 thousand drams (about 160 dollars).

The main speaker, RA minister of urban development Vardan Vardanian
said that the government’s proposal on these amendments is based on the
results of studies done by the State Urban Development Inspection in
recent years. In particular, construction work at 1,865 out of 6,084
facilities examined in 2004-2008 was done without technical control of
the quality of construction. It was mentioned that technical
examination of buildings and structures is a complex engineering
process that requires well-qualified personnel and modern equipment,
whereas now any organization implementing scientific research and
engineering research functions in seismic construction sector is
allowed to make such an examination. As a result, in many cases the
conclusions of two different organizations about the same building
contradict each other.