RA Ministry of Tranport and Communications Inspections Reveals Poor Quality Work

The Control Chamber of the Republic of Armenia summarized today the results of inspections carried out by the RA Ministry of Transport and Communications from 2007–2008. Control Chamber Chair Ishkhan Zakaryan stated that the situation in the ministry is quite distressing.

According to Zakaryan, the results of examining road construction work are discouraging. The inspection has revealed 1,635,000 AMD worth of poor quality work and about 19,801,000 AMD worth of unproductive expenses.

Violations have been found also in implementing programs on maintaining and using roads which are of state and international significance.

“Current maintenance of the roads includes a series of measures. In fact, some work of an official nature has been done,” said Zakaryan.

He also added that it had turned out the Ministry had planned to estimate the condition of the roads in the country in December which would be almost impossible to do given the snow at that time of year.

“That is to say the work was set to fail from the very beginning,” explained Zakaryan.

According to him, the inspection has shown that ministry staff are also involved in cuning schemes: 2-3 Ministry employees mechanically sign all the acts.

“Had they worked even 30 days in a month, had they worked Saturdays and Sundays, they couldn’t have observed the kilometres of roads presented to us [in their documents]. Now I ask, how could these 3 people pass these 117-km roads in a day and inspect the quality of the work? That is, we’re dealing with documents that have been officially signed,” concluded Zakaryan.

Zakaryan also said that those funds spent unproductively are subject to return to the state budget.