The Government of the Republic of Armenia

A cabinet meeting was held today, chaired by Acting Deputy Prime Minister Tigran Avinyan.

The government approved a package of bills on amending the Judicial Code, the Code of Administrative Procedure and the Code of Civil Procedure of the Republic of Armenia. The drafts are supposed to ensure the conduct of administrative proceedings in the Court of Cassation through a specialized administrative chamber, as well as to enable the Supreme Judicial Council to replenish the lists of candidates for judges and candidates for promotion through more flexible mechanisms. In particular, two independent specialized civil-administrative chambers shall be set up following the dissolution of the Civil-Administrative Chamber of the Court of Cassation.

The amendments are expected to streamline issues related to the formation of the civil-administrative chambers of the Court of Cassation and provide for their smooth operations. Flexible mechanisms will be introduced for replenishing the lists of candidates for judges and the lists of candidates for career promotion without any time and staffing restrictions.

A decision was made in an effort to ensure compliance with the requirements of the law “On General Education.” Accordingly, 100,091.4 and 82,620.6 thousand drams will respectively be withdrawn from the preplanned budgets of the activities referred to as “Introduction of a new certification system aimed at improving teachers’ qualifications” and “Provision of methodological services for educational purposes” and earmark them to the “Training of teachers subject to certification in educational institutions” activity. The reference note says that due to the liquidation of National Institute of Education CJSC, teachers at general education institutions were not attested over the past two years. It is expected that in the next two years not only teachers who should be attested in these years (about 7,400 teachers), but also teachers who did not participate in the process in the previous two years will be attested.

Armenian Caritas charitable public organization is going to implement the Children’s Town program (creative center) in Ararat Marz at its own expense. By the Deputy Prime Minister’s decision, with a total cost equivalent to USD 20 million, the Armenian Caritas-supported Children’s Town program was recognized as charitable. The Children’s Town is conceived as a center of non-formal education, a creative center where teenagers over 14 years of age from across the country can get specialization (mainly crafts) and life skills. To this end, the government adopted a decision “On consenting to the donation of plots of land considered as municipal property.”