During the closed-door discussion held as part of the government’s previous session, we held a discussion, and without going into details, I must say that we came to the conclusion that Armenia needs to change the concept paper on the policy that the country is leading in borderline villages. This is what Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan declared during today’s government session.

“One might get the impression that there is a context according to which those villages are always targeted for shelling and the repair works are being carried out with this logic. We need to change the logic. Not only do we need to repair the villages, but we also need to have a specific policy and strategy for development of those villages. The policy in borderline villages needs to be the major indicator of the combat readiness and competitiveness of our country,” the Prime Minister said, adding that this is a time-consuming process.

Pashinyan said acting head of the Urban Development Committee Armen Ghularyan has left for the villages to get acquainted with the situation. In his turn, Armen Ghularyan stated that seven houses are already being repaired in the villages. According to him, there is a house in Chinari where there are five children and five adults, and it would be preferable to build a house on the land near the house.

“We offered the head of the village to launch activities to allocate lands on which we will design districts with a new architectural style and consider which groups of needy people need houses,” he said.

Pashinyan added that the houses to be built are the houses that were destroyed after the shelling and couldn’t be repaired and that out of the three destroyed houses, people were living in only one of them.