At Thursday’s Cabinet meeting, the government of Armenia amended its program of reimbursing the expenses of temporary hosts to the adult citizens who lost their residential real estate due to the recent war or the destruction of the residential real estate in the communities under the control of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), making this quarterly program to six months.

Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Mesrop Arakelyan noted that the program has been operating since December last year, and the aforesaid hosts receive an assistance of 45,000 drams, each, per month for each adult resident.

"About 3,000 hosts receive support on a monthly basis, who hosts more than 7,000 adult citizens. The total number of Artsakh residents included in this program is 15 thousand. These are the citizens who are temporarily in Armenia. In addition to this program, some Artsakh residents have temporarily settled in hotels. We  have a program for that, too; we reimburse the expenses of the hotels. And some of them live in state-owned institutions, the expenses of which are again covered by the state," the minister said.

He added that at the moment 25 to 30 thousand Artsakh residents live in Armenia. "Residence reconstruction, renovation works are in progress in Artsakh, which will gain more momentum. They are already returning [to Artsakh] in small groups, mainly to rural areas of Artsakh," Arakelyan added.

In his turn, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan noted that we are talking about the citizens in Armenia and Artsakh who have hosted the Artsakh people who are deprived of their homes.