{"id":254385,"date":"2014-06-09T15:19:14","date_gmt":"2014-06-09T11:19:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/?p=254385"},"modified":"2014-06-09T15:42:49","modified_gmt":"2014-06-09T11:42:49","slug":"keep-armenian-transport-minister-away-from-north-south-road-project-opinion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2014\/06\/09\/keep-armenian-transport-minister-away-from-north-south-road-project-opinion.html","title":{"rendered":"Keep Armenian Transport Minister Away from North-South Road Project: Opinion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n\t<span style=\"line-height: 1.6em;\">It is difficult to say how much <a href=\"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/en\/2014\/06\/05\/where-is-the-954-million-allocated-for-construction-of-north-south-highway.html\"><span style=\"color:#0000CD;\"><strong>money has disappeared<\/strong><\/span><\/a> over the course of building the North-South Road Corridor, said Hetq Editor-in-Chief Edik Baghdasaryan in a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/2014\/06\/07\/%C2%AB%D5%B0%D5%B5%D5%B8%D6%82%D5%BD%D5%AB%D5%BD-%D5%B0%D5%A1%D6%80%D5%A1%D5%BE%C2%BB-%D5%A8-%D6%87-%D5%B0%D5%A1%D5%B5%D5%A1%D5%BD%D5%BF%D5%A1%D5%B6%D5%B5%D5%A1%D5%B6-%D5%AC%D6%80%D5%A1%D5%A3%D6%80.html\"><span style=\"color:#0000CD;\"><strong>video broadcast of Epress.am&#39;s Week in Review program<\/strong><\/span><\/a> [in Armenian only]. Baghdasaryan is currently working on an article about the highway, which will be published soon. The total cost of the project is $954 million, and according to Baghdasaryan, it will be impossible to carry out the project.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t&quot;I spoke to various experts, and all say that it&#39;s impossible to build the road because the project, it seems, is a rough draft.&nbsp;\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t&quot;It&#39;s difficult to say how much money has disappeared, but the three sections which should&#39;ve been built in the first stage &mdash; Yerevan-Ararat, Yerevan-Ashtarak, and Ashtarak-Talin &mdash; the largest of which is Ashtarak-Talin, and which, I think, is the most expensive ($180), these roads don&#39;t exist. These three sections should&#39;ve been completed by now. On the Ashtarak-Talin section, it can be said, only 2% of the work is completed.&nbsp;\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t&quot;Even before starting the work, the company [that won the tender] was given a $31 million advance. We don&#8217;t yet know how that happened. That is to say, they hadn&#8217;t yet done anything, and $31 million was allocated [to them],&quot; he said.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tBaghdasaryan also drew attention to several risks inherent in the project: &quot;The danger is that if the quality of the cement is reduced by 1%, it can shorten the life [of the road] by 10 years. These roads are designed [to last] for 30&ndash;40 years. That is, imagine, [because of] some official&#39;s fault, we will reduce the life of our roads by 10 years.&nbsp;\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t&quot;I think, this team needs to dissolve, and a new team gathered. [RA Minister of Transport and Communications <a href=\"http:\/\/gov.am\/en\/structure\/10\/\"><span style=\"color:#0000CD;\"><strong>Gagik<\/strong><\/span><span style=\"color:#000000;\">]<\/span><span style=\"color:#0000CD;\"><strong> Beglaryan<\/strong><\/span><\/a> [pictured] should be kept away from this transaction; you can&#39;t give this much money to Beglaryan and say, &#39;Oversee it.&#39; How can you tell the transport minister, you have to oversee this billion dollars to build a road?,&quot; he said.&nbsp;\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tAccording to Baghdasaryan, if the current team works on building the roads, it won&#39;t happen.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It is difficult to say how much money has disappeared over the course of building the North-South Road Corridor, said Hetq Editor-in-Chief Edik Baghdasaryan.<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":234863,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[25879,19708,56000,35237],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254385"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254385\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}