YEREVAN. - Armenia has 496 anti-hail stations, but much more, namely 5,000, is needed.

Minister of Emergency Situations of Armenia, Armen Yeritsyan, told the aforementioned on Monday, speaking at the parliamentary hearings on draft 2017 State Budget. Currently, they cover only 8.9 percent of the country’s territory.

Almost half of the operating stations were installed in different years spontaneously. Some people installed them near their houses in a village or the village administration decided to install it where needed. But they should be installed according to a specific system, from where hail clouds come, the Minister noted.

Shots shouldn’t be fired randomly either, he added.

“Specialists should run these stations. In case of random shots a cloud can be driven off to another village or even a harmless cloud can be turned into a hail-bearing one,” Yeritsyan said.

The stations should be managed by a radiolocation system. In Soviet times – before 1992 – Armenia had 11 such station, while now only two of them are left in Aragatsotn and Lori provinces.

Thus, a few more radiolocation stations ($1.5 mln each) and hundreds, even thousands of anti-hail stations (3.5-4.5 mln AMD each, i.e. approx. $8.5 thousand) are needed for provinces, the Minister noted.