Epress.am News from Armenia
Servicemen who carried out patrol duty during the April 2016 escalation of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict will receive additional tuition discounts, the Armenian Youth Fund (AYF), headed by Republican MP Karen Avagyan, said in a statement on Monday.
Recall, it has been reported in recent months that military authorities in Nagorno-Karabakh have been failing to make the respective entries in the military cards of recently discharged Armenian soldiers on their participation in the four-day fighting at the Karabakh-Azerbaijan border. There have also been some instances when servicemen complained that officials were crossing out the entries that had already been made and thus depriving them of certain privileges they would otherwise be eligible for in the sphere of health and education. Defense Ministry officials have subsequently explained that only participants of direct combat operations were eligible for these benefits and discounts.
Janik Simonyan, for example, who was at Hadrut combat positions when the fighting broke out, had also been deprived of the discount with a justification that he had only been on patrol duty and did not take part in the fighting. “I shot and was shot at. What do they mean by saying I did not participate in the fighting?” Simonyan, for his part, argued during a press conference last month.
According to the AYF statement, the Defense Ministry and the Fund have now come to an agreement to provide an additional 20% tuition discount to former servicemen who only carried out patrol duty during the four-day escalation. The required sum, the statement said, will be allocated by the AYF, and will be added to the already existing 30% discount.
It is noteworthy that the AYF statement is thus verifying the Defense Ministry position differentiating patrol duty servicemen from direct combatants. Incidentally, the media has repeatedly reported over the years that Armenian universities mandatorily allocate 2% of their annual budget funds to the AYF. Part of the allocated sum goes to the implementation of various programs, including compensation for tuition fees of students from lower-income families. Thus, under the guise of charity, the AYF is actually giving part of the university allocations back to the students.