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Human Rights Defender Office officially rejects grants starting from today and redirects them to the social organizations. ‘first of all to develop the civil society. So that we would be established as a state institution, which is not fed by different grants but exists by means of the state budget and serves to the main purposes of the state budget. This is our objective and we will try next year to solve with you this issue as well’ said the Ombudsman Karen Andreasyan at the joint session of the standing committees of the RA National Assembly on November 5 during the discussion of the matter of financing of the staff of the Ombudsman Office in the scope of the project of the law on the RA state budget 2013.

According to the 2013 state budget project the expenses for the maintenance of the Ombudsman Office staff are expected 176, 56 million AMD in comparison with 164 million AMD in 2012. The increase is conditioned with recalculation of the fund of wages defined by the relevant requirements of the law on Income tax that will come into force from January 1, 2013.

The most part of the sum, i.e. 118 million AMD, will be directed to the fund of wages.

As K. Andreasyan noted, they requested from the Government to increase the financing of the Ombudsman Office by 11 million AMD ‘to organize regular visits to the prisons, military units, police units, orphanages, mental clinics in the capacity of a national preventive mechanism, in other words to all those places where people’s rights can be abused’. According to him, at least 350 annual visits will be required. For this reason the Office applied for the financing of the daily guard, with supplementary fuel, as well as in order to organize monitoring the financing of four more positions: social expert, doctor and two lawyers.

The RA Government had previously rejected the supplementary financing in the amount of 11 million AMD, however as the First Deputy Minister of Finance Pavel Safaryan stated at the joint session, the RA Government will most probably provide 5,6 million AMD for two more positions.

The Ombudsman Office staff will receive the second and last part of the financing from the extra-budget sources in 2013 defined in the agreement signed by the OSCE Office in Yerevan aimed at realizing the project ‘Development of the capacity of the Ombudsman Office during 2012-2013 elections in the RA’. According to K. Andreasyan, it is equal to the annual sum provided by the state budget.

In the scope of this extra-budget financing the issues of renting offices in 6 regions of Shirak, Gegharqunik, Vayots Dzor, Syuniq, Tavush and Lori will be solved as well as the financing of the rapid reaction group.