Press Secretary of the RA Defense Minister Artsrun Hovhannisyan made a note in his Facebook page, noting that the information about injured servicemen should not always be announced. He stated:
“If the lives of servicemen are not endangered, it is inexpedient to report about the injured servicemen and to present additional facts to the opponent.”
A member of Sasna Tsrer group Martiros Hakobyan, known as “Ded,” was not present at the trial.
The judge offered a break so that the defender could find out why Martiros Hakobyan did not come to the court.
While the issue was being debated, Tigran Manukyan, another member of Sasna Tsrer group, announced that he would also leave the conference room as his friends were on hunger strike.
However, Tigran Manukyan did not manage to leave, since the break was announced.
Serj Tankian with his wife Angela Tankian have participated in the tradition of Orran Benevolent Non-Governmental organization, which included donation of food and sweets to needy families for Christmas holidays.
They made donations for 215 beneficiary families of Orran. In addition, 212 other needy families, which were selected from Gyumri, Vanadzor and other villages, also received donation from Tankian.
For the first time in recent years, the lowest death rate was recorded among detainees and convicts kept in penitentiary institutions for 2017. So, if in 2010, 37 deaths were registered and in 2014, 38 deaths were registered, this figure was 17 for 2017.
7 years-old Albert Qartashyan, who lives in the town of Berd in Tavush province, wishes peace. It’s hard for him to describe by words what is piece, so he just smiles.
He likes to sing, and this song dedicates everyone who keeps the border. The film is shot in the village of Movses.
Armenia’s Caucasus Institute Director, political scientist Alexander Iskandaryan considers Vardenis-Martakert road leading to Karabakh as one of the achievements of 2017. He also considers as a success “Enhanced and Comprehensive Agreement” signed between Armenia and the European Union at the end of last year.
In his conviction, there are no foundations for achieving progress in the negotiation process to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Also, he does not share the opinion that Azerbaijan can take advantage of regional instability due to the riots in Islamic Republic of Iran, and provoke a war in Nagorno Karabakh.
“No progress should be expected in negotiations on 99%. But, in the same time, I can say that we should not expect a large-scale war. It is difficult to guess what will happen, as it depends on the big players and the situation within Azerbaijan,” says the political scientist.
The rise in prices continued along with the New Year in Armenia. According to Pan-Armenian National Movement (PANM) board member Hovhannes Igityan, they have objective and subjective reasons for this.
“One of the objective reasons is sanctions imposed on Russia which also affect our country. One of the subjective reasons is that people from our political field consider themselves temporary. Also, instead of decreasing corruption in Armenia, it is increasing, which also has a great impact on the prices of goods,” he says.
According to sociologist Aharon Adibekyan, the reason for inflation is the decline in the international economic situation and the sanctions imposed on Russia.
“Our external debt is about $ 7 billion. Our country lives with debt,” he says. According to him, investments are not made in the country, only 40% of the population lives with salaries, 26% with pensions, 19% lives better, since they have income, and 10% lives due to the help from outside. If 10 big factories are opened, 100,000 jobs will be provided to people, and also a few small factories, unemployment will drop dramatically.
“There is hope that entering the EEU will bring investments to Armenia,” he says.
It was difficult for him to predict the future, saying that he could give an evaluation within a year, when it would be clear how the parliamentary system works.
Karen Chilingaryan, Head of Consumer Advice Center, considers that the rise in prices in 2017 has begun in the middle of the year.
“At first, the price of butter has increased, then the price of meat. The price of beef has risen by 15-20 percent, and the authorities have mentioned that this was due to the drought and the rise of prices of forage. However, there were also exports from June to September. 2000 large and medium-sized cattle were exported to Arabian countries. Export is a good thing, but it should be organized so that it does not have a negative impact on your citizen. So, the inflation of prices has continues. “Chingaryan says.
According to the Head of Consumer Advice Center, becoming a member of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) has not brought any advantage to Armenia, but, on the contrary, the prices continue to rise in 2018. Karen Chilingaryan notes that Azerbaijan and Georgia are not members of EEU, but they use the EEU market, so Armenia has no advantage over its neighbors.
Nearly 60 car insurance agents have closed the road leading to Bagratashen customs point today. Protesters complain of unequal competition conditions in car insurance.
According to participants of the action, if they had the opportunity to insure about 10 thousand drams a day, today they cannot even earn 1000 drams a day.
For more information, here.
As it is known, the RA Police are trying to keep secret the information on the number of police officers and vehicles in the country. However, different police officials publish figures which require simple arithmetic to receive the total number of officers of the Police and Police Troops. Similarly, it is very easy to reveal the number of police vehicles by using open sources.
“Union of Informed Citizens” has decided to publish a series of non-confidential information related to the staff of the RA Police and the Police Troops, as well as the number of vehicles possessed by them.
Staff
In order to calculate the number of police officers, “Union of Informed Citizens” sent an inquiry to the Head of RA Police, requesting information on the average salary of the officers. According to letter N 13/2206 received from Head of Finance and Budget Department of the RA Police, the average gross salary of police officers and police troops is 228.600 AMD. And according to N 13/3807 letter, the officers receive an average of 223.500 AMD as a reward. In other words, one police officer annually receives a gross income of about 3 million AMD. During the same year of 2016, about 30.9 billion AMD was spent from the state budget of the RA Police under the budget line “salary and rewards of employees”. From that amount, 10.6 million AMD was paid as a bonus to about 1.100 police officers who are special civil servants. Dividing the salary fund into annual average gross salary and reward of the police officer, we will get the total number of police officers and police troops. And that number makes up 10.400.
It should be added that salaries have also been paid from the Extrabudgetary Fund of the RA Police. Thus, 6.3 billion AMD was paid as salaries for security services (mainly), 1.9 billion to the Road Police, and 270 million to the Passport Department. About 3100 police officers receive salaries with that amount, 2300 of which are involved in security guardianship activities (many private organizations use the guard services of the RA Police, including banks, shops, etc.). Thus, about 3100 employees (or most of them) are difficult to qualify as police officers in classical sense (this is a matter of assessment).
This number slightly diverges from Deputy Head of RA Police Vardan Yeghiazaryan’s statement on the amount of budget allocations per police officer that he made last year. Major general Yeghiazaryan announced that the budget allocation for one police officer made up 4.1 million AMD in 2015. The total budget of the RA Police was 36.3 billion AMD in 2015. Thus, it results that there were 8.900 police officers in Armenia then.
It can be stated that the number of police officers in Armenia is between 8.900 and 10.400. Among them, about 1100 are special civil servants. And the Police have another 3100 employees at the expense of the extrabudgetary means.
Vehicles
In order to calculate the number of vehicles possessed by the RA Police, the number of procured CMVLI contracts has been studied since according to the RA legislation, there only very few types of transport means that may not be insured.
According to the RA Law on Procurements, all the procurements (including those of CMVLI contracts) shall be open and transparent. With this principle, the CMVLI contracts of vehicles possessed by the RA Police, which contain the number of vehicles, type of CMVLI, is published in the public procurements armeps.am website.
Thus, during the previous 12 months, the Police have signed 1118 CMVLI and 41 Casco insurance contracts. 13 of them were CMVLI contracts for motorcycles. The total value of CMVLI contracts has made up more than 46 million AMD.
Moreover, it should be added that only in 2017, the Police procured 126 units of vehicles. Twelve were motorcycles, 38 were SUV, 4 were minibuses and 72 were passenger cars. The sum value of vehicles procured during 2017 made up 660 million, and a considerable part of them were Japanese “Toyota” cars made in Turkey.
It should be noted once again that the data on the vehicles are as of 2017, and those of the staff are as of 2016. All the information has been collected from open (not confidential) sources only.
Union of Informed Citizens