RFE/RL – Armenian Officials To Get More Bonuses Ahead Of Elections

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s cabinet said that they will be rewarded for their improved performance, rather than the elections. But it did not specify any criteria used for evaluating their work.

Armenian opposition leaders are bound to describe the latest payments as an attempt to buy votes. They already accused Pashinian of seeking to bribe voters when the latter unexpectedly announced late last month an imminent rise in pensions.

The fresh bonuses will be allocated from the government’s budgetary Reserve Fund designed for emergency spending. Their aggregate amount represents a sizable increase from 3.6 billion drams provided for the same purpose last year.

Details of the previous bonuses paid to senior staff and other employees of 16 government agencies were exposed by Armenian media only in January, causing outrage among many citizens. It emerged that the ministers, their deputies and department heads received sums comparable to their annual incomes, ordinary civil servants were rewarded with less than one month’s worth of their much smaller salaries. It is not yet clear whether the government will maintain this huge disparity.

Justice Minister Srbuhi Galian was the only senior official to have disclosed the size of her post-tax bonus: about 7 million drams ($18,400). Pashinian defended these lavish payments on January 15, saying that they will make those officials less prone to corruption. He gave a similar reason for his government’s latest decision.

“No matter how much we are criticized, with this mechanism, we are taking an important step on the path to the further development of our state,” he said.

Varuzhan Hoktanian, a veteran activist affiliated with Armenia’s leading anti-graft watchdog, again questioned on Thursday the official rationale for the bonuses, pointing to a lack of transparency in their distribution.

“In addition to high salaries which are a necessary condition for reducing corruption, we should also look at the existence of transparency, accountability, and oversight mechanisms,” Hoktanian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “I doubt that this exists. But if it does, we should at least see in a transparent way what exactly the rewards are for.”

The leadership of the Armenian parliament controlled by Pashinian’s Civil Contract party also caused outrage on social media in December when it confirmed spending at least 545 million drams ($1.4 million) on yearend bonuses to its members and staffers. Each of the 107 parliament deputies received 3 million drams ($7,850).

The net salary of a rank-and-file deputy is roughly 600,000 drams ($1,550) per month. Armenia’s official average monthly wage currently stands at almost 309,000 drams ($810). Most working-age Armenians, including schoolteachers and other public sector employees, earn less than that.

—