YEREVAN, MARCH 30, NOYAN TAPAN. During the March 30 sitting, the Council of Armenia's Audit Chamber approved the current report on the results of control over the use of 2007-2008 state budget allocations to the RA Ministry of Transport and Communication under the programs on maintenance and operation of state roads and major repairs of transport facilities. The Chairman of the Audit Chamber Ishkhan Zakarian said at a press conference after the sitting that "the results are disappointing". According to him, control of allocations for major repairs of state roads was mostly exerted through checks of documents, in some cases - through check measurements. 16 contracting organizations were checked. 972 million 41 thousand drams out of a total of 5 billion 31 million drams provided for the implementation of the program-envisaged work were subjected to check measurements. As a result, upward distortions of 201 million drams were revealed and have to be transferred back to the state budget. In addition, the Audit Chamber revealed low quality work of 1 million 635 thousand drams, inefficient expenses of 19 million 801 thousand drams, while estimates were artificially increased by 123 million drams. I. Zakarian said that in fact the ministry took a formal approach to the acceptance of the work done. In particular, the examination of acceptance reports showed that they were signed by 2-3 employees of the ministry, without any violations recorded. I. Zakarian expressed satisfaction that the joint discussion of the revealed problems with the newly-appointed minister of transport and communication Manuk Vardanian produced "quite a strict reaction" of the minister, which inspires confidence that further checks will not reveal such results. It was mentioned that those 16 organizations have already presented a clear timetable for reimbursement of the financial violations discovered by the Audit Chamber.

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