YEREVAN. – The passenger transport problems in Armenia arise due to the inaction by the Ministry of Transport and Communication.

Chairman of the “Achilles” Center for the Defense of Drivers’ Rights NGO, Eduard Hovhannisyan, stated the aforesaid at a press conference on Saturday.

Hovhannisyan, reflecting on the recent Armenian passenger bus crash in Russia, stated that a timetable for the working and rest hours of the drivers should be placed inside the buses.

“The matters of technical inspection, which shall be clearly conducted and there must be a [respective] document, are also very important,” the NGO chairman added.

He stressed that the providing of insurance to bus passengers is also important.

“The [bus] passengers must be insured, just like in the case of airplanes,” Eduard Hovhannisyan said. “Had they done [this], compensation should have been given, for example, to the victims of the last crash. But now, the [Armenian] state is covering the funeral costs; but it should not be like this.”

Nine people were killed and several dozen others were injured as a passenger bus, which was traveling from Moscow to Yerevan, crashed on Tuesday at around 2:10am local time, in Tula Oblast (province) in Russia.

Russia has opened a criminal case into this bus crash, and on charges of “breaking the road traffic and vehicle operation rules.” A similar case has been filed in Armenia, too.

According to preliminary data, the bus driver, Garnik Harutyunyan, had fallen asleep at the steering wheel.

Harutyunyan has been taken into custody for two months.