RESULTS OF CHECKS AT MINISTRY OF TRANSPORT AND COMMUNICATION ARE DISAPPOINTING, CHAIRMAN OF AUDIT CHAMBER SAYS

Noyan Tapan
March 30, 2010

YEREVAN, MARCH 30, NOYAN TAPAN. During the March 30 sitting, the
Council of Armenia’s Audit Chamber approved the current report
on the results of control over the use of 2007-2008 state budget
allocations to the RA Ministry of Transport and Communication under
the programs on maintenance and operation of state roads and major
repairs of transport facilities. The Chairman of the Audit Chamber
Ishkhan Zakarian said at a press conference after the sitting that
"the results are disappointing".

According to him, control of allocations for major repairs of state
roads was mostly exerted through checks of documents, in some cases –
through check measurements. 16 contracting organizations were checked.

972 million 41 thousand drams out of a total of 5 billion 31 million
drams provided for the implementation of the program-envisaged work
were subjected to check measurements. As a result, upward distortions
of 201 million drams were revealed and have to be transferred back
to the state budget. In addition, the Audit Chamber revealed low
quality work of 1 million 635 thousand drams, inefficient expenses
of 19 million 801 thousand drams, while estimates were artificially
increased by 123 million drams.

I. Zakarian said that in fact the ministry took a formal approach to
the acceptance of the work done. In particular, the examination of
acceptance reports showed that they were signed by 2-3 employees of
the ministry, without any violations recorded.

I. Zakarian expressed satisfaction that the joint discussion of the
revealed problems with the newly-appointed minister of transport and
communication Manuk Vardanian produced "quite a strict reaction" of
the minister, which inspires confidence that further checks will not
reveal such results. It was mentioned that those 16 organizations
have already presented a clear timetable for reimbursement of the
financial violations discovered by the Audit Chamber.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress