Epress.am News from Armenia
Hraparak newspaper reports that a number of Armenian lawmakers have been persuading their assistants to sign an agreement, according to which, they willingly give away 1 percent of their salaries to families of soldiers who were either killed or injured during the fighting that broke out in early April in Nagorno-Karabakh. The document addressed to the parliament's chief of staff Hrayr Tovmasyan, however, states that the employees have chosen to donate the money of their own accord.
The form has been going around in the National Assembly for a long while now, and the forced volunteerism has angered the staff. An assistant to one of the MPs – who wished to remain anonymous – told the newspaper that “they are yet again using the soldiers' names to rob us of our money.”
“According to rough estimates, with an AMD 128 million monthly payroll, donations will reach nearly 16 million drams a year. No small amount of money, of course, if it does indeed serve its purpose. But here arises a further question: how long will the state shift its duties to the citizens,” Hraparak writes.