Avinian and his four deputies will be the main beneficiaries of the measure initiated by them. Starting from January, the mayor affiliated with the ruling Civil Contract party will make over 2 million drams ($5,700) per month, up from 1.3 million drams currently earned by him.
The vice-mayors will have their salaries nearly double to an average of roughly 1.9 million drams. The head of Yerevan’s administrative districts and Avinian’s advisers will also be eligible for significant, albeit less drastic, pay rises.
Avinian’s office swiftly pushed the decision through the city council controlled by Civil Contract without a detailed explanation of its rationale. Opposition members of the council protested against this fact. One of them, Aram Torosian, said the municipal administration should have first and foremost raised the wages of more low-ranking local government officials and municipal employees.
Mesrop Manukian, an opposition parliamentarian and former councilor, was the first to reveal and decry the massive pay rises on Monday.
“There is nothing in this draft about salary increases for Yerevan’s public bus drivers,” wrote Manukian. “There is nothing about salary increases for the employees of the Yerevan Waste Removal and Sanitary Cleaning agency who clean Yerevan's streets every day.”
Deputy Mayor Suren Grigorian defended the measure, saying that he can barely live on 952 million drams ($2,630) per month currently paid to him. The figure is three times higher than Armenia’s official average monthly wage.
“The sum I receive now and its purchasing power may have covered my needs one or two years ago, but it no longer covers those same needs today or does so only with greater difficulty,” he told journalists.
The Armenian government similarly announced last month plans to roughly double the salaries of its top officials and parliament deputies in addition to hefty bonuses regularly paid to them. A relevant bill drafted by it also calls for significant pay rises for senior law-enforcement and judicial officials. They would be more modest for a much larger number of civil servants.