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Satisfying Communities Before the Elections [March 19, 2007] This was the logic behind last week's decision by the Armenian government to allocate 250 million drams from the state budget to cover the community budget deficits. “Why should there be debts in the salary owed to the staff of local administrative bodies if the government provides the communities with grants in a timely manner?” Hovik Abrahamyan, the minister of Territorial Administration, posed this “naive” question last week during his consultation with provincial heads. This issue is being discussed openly in the government for the first time in the last decade, but it is not a new problem. The number of community administrative bodies in a situation of this sort had been growing each year – according to information obtained six months ago, the bank accounts of more than 54 community administrations had been frozen. According to the government, 32 village budgets had been subjected to review because of salary debts to workers. Over the last few years, the supervisory service of the National Assembly uncovered proof of misspending during a study into expenditures in village communities, but the government did not express concern. Even though this was a key issue in recent meetings between the president and provincial heads, this does not mean that the national government is seriously concerned with the current situation. The truth is that this is not being done to give the problem a final solution, but rather as one of many pre-election activities. Otherwise, that discussion should have led to specific steps which would prevent such debts from accumulating in the future. The only objective of the discussion organized with the Minister of Territorial Administration was to justify the 250 million dram allocation. In other words, this was an election bribe to the dissatisfied workers of the local administrative bodies to motivate them to work for the ruling party. After all, it is not just the staff of these administrative bodies who get paid through the community budget, but also workers in kindergartens, libraries and cultural institutions. During any election, the authorities expect support from these workers. Naturally, an administrative worker who has not received his wages for years would hardly be motivated to campaign for a government who has not even deigned to reply to letters of complaint written in this regard. Deputy Minister of Territorial Administration Vache Terteryan stated at a
discussion in the ministry that their investigation had shown two main reasons
for the freezing of community bank accounts – The last part of this statement is especially interesting, since all the officials who have replied to our questions, including the provincial heads, have all had one thing to say – that provincial heads do not have the right to supervise the work of communities administrations; that right is reserved by law for the Council of Elders. Now they have blamed the provincial administrations, saying that it was their poor supervision which has led to this situation. In the past, when criminal cases have been filed against community heads for illegal activity with proof that community heads have broken the law and caused the government financial damage, the losses were recovered from the community budget, not the community heads personally. Moreover, this has been considered a natural thing to do. There have been times when the debts owed to the electrical company or the suppliers of irrigation or drinking water have been so large that the whole budget of the community has been frozen. The government, without investigation the reasons behind the deficit, would cover their losses, thus legalizing the community heads' “poor work” or their embezzlement. This is the government attitude with which community heads have been working for the past 15 years. They prefer not to collect taxes so as not to lose their electorate. Besides that, knowing well that the collected taxes would not serve their actual purpose, they prefer to avoid angering the residents who would, sooner or later, ask where their money had gone. It is interesting to note that in 90% of the communities where the budgets have been frozen, the former community heads have gone to court to demand the payment of their salaries. However, nobody has asked them what they have been spending during their 3 years in office, or, if they had been unable to pay salaries, how they expect their successors to be able to do so. Or, what were they thinking when they were supposed to be collecting the land and asset taxes? This issue will remain unresolved until the government decides to implement the article about publicizing the community budget, in the law regarding local administrative bodies. This article would hold each community head responsible for expenditures during their term in office. At least in that case no budget would be frozen due to unpaid salaries. After all, was it just a coincidence that publicizing expenditures – which was supposed to come into force in the period between 2004 and 2006 - was taken up as a part of the battle against corruption? Sara Petrosyan |
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