In a statement to RFE/RL’s Armenian Service, Pashinian’s press office said each of those 479 officials has received bonuses equivalent to their monthly salary. The payout cost taxpayers 97.5 million drams ($203,000) in total, it said.
Several government ministers acknowledged that they and their subordinates too have received such yearend payments. But they refused to reveal any figures.
Parliament speaker Alen Simonian rewarded all members and staffers of the National Assembly just as lavishly last week. Simonian approved similar, albeit slightly more modest, bonuses on the occasion of Armenia’s Independence Day marked on September 21.
Both opposition alliances represented in the National Assembly criticized that decision as profligate and unethical. Lawmakers representing them donated the money to victims of the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh and their families.
Pashinian significantly increased the amount and frequency of bonuses paid to civil servants and especially high-ranking government officials after coming to power in 2018. Responding to criticism from opposition figures and other government critics, he has said that these payments discourage corrupt practices in the government and the broader public sector.
The Armenian affiliate of the anti-graft watchdog Transparency International, has dismissed these explanations. Its program coordinator, Varuzhan Hoktanian, on Thursday denounced the lopsided bonuses as “political corruption” aimed at making sure that Pashinian’s political allies and other senior officials stay loyal to the prime minister.
“The loyalty of doctors, teachers or kindergarten workers is probably not important,” Hoktanian said, alluding to much more modest salaries and bonuses received by these and other public sector employees.
Most of them are paid less than Armenia’s official average wage of 200,000 drams ($417) a month. Government ministers and deputy ministers earn 1.5 million and 1 million drams respectively.
Pashinian caused uproar in 2019 when it emerged that he secretly doubled these officials’ monthly incomes.
Hoktanian argued that the latest holiday bonuses paid by Pashinian are also not performance-based.
“If the people’s living standards improve and pensions are raised … significantly, then [the senior officials] are doing a good job and let them get [those bonuses,]” he said. “But I don’t see that. So what’s the difference from the past when they stole from the state budget? Now they have simply legalized that theft.”