YEREVAN, JANUARY 21, ARMENPRESS. The opposition Prosperous Armenia faction of the Armenian parliament says it is attaching importance to developing an employment program for government staff that will eventually lose their jobs as a result of the optimization and governmental structural changes.

MP Gevorg Petrosyan said at a parliamentary briefing today that as long as the bill on the amendments hasn’t been submitted to parliament, their party has not debated it and doesn’t have a final decision.

“Prosperous Armenia is never in a hurry to express opinion”, he said.

“Perhaps the government will submit the kind of format that will disperse all our concerns. There hasn’t been a debate and I am not authorized to express a stance on behalf of the faction,” he said.

However, he did in fact say that dissolving the ministries of culture and diaspora are not expedient.

According to a preliminary version of amendments in the government’s structure, the number of ministries in the Cabinet will be reduced from 17 to 12. Several ministries will be merged with one another.

Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan