Prime Minister explains slow pace in public sector

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has admitted that some government programs are advancing slowly and explained the reasons behind it.

Pashinyan made the comments during a meeting with representatives of the Armenian community of Switzerland.

He agreed with critisizm that the government is working slowly, but noted that the same can be said about all governments across the world.

“The government of Armenia is working slower than the best governments of the world for one simple reason, because it lags behind all best governments in two parameters. First, we lag behind in the issue of cadre professionalism, and second, we lag behind with the size of remuneration,” Pashinyan said.

The PM explained the reason with the level of education. “Why are we behind in terms of the level of professionalism? Because the level of education in Armenia isn’t such that it can prepare cadres with worthy professionalism for the state, while it is very difficult to convince those who have worthy professionalism to come and work with two, three, four or even five hundred thousand drams salary [per month] if they can make ten times more in the private sector,” Pashinyan said, adding that this issue is not a matter of patriotism, because for example many people have taken loans or sold their homes to be able to afford education.

According to the Prime Minister, if the government were to increase the salary for officials the move could cause discontent among the people.