YEREVAN, DECEMBER 26, NOYAN TAPAN. The RA National Assembly on December 26 passed in second reading the draft law on local self-government in the city of Yerevan and, based on it, the legislative package envisaging amendments to 22 current laws and codes. The darft and the package were adopted with 95 votes in favor and 6 against. The members of "Heritage" faction voted against the package due to the government's rejection of the principled proposals made by the faction, including the proposal on order of mayor's election. The parliament passed in first reading the government-submitted package of amendments to the Law on Licensing and the Law on State Duty. The package envisages including the technical control of construction quality and the technical examination of buildings and structures in the list of activities subject to licensing. It is proposed that the annual state duty for licensing of the two above-mentioned activities should be fixed at 50 thousand drams (about 160 dollars). The main speaker, RA minister of urban development Vardan Vardanian said that the government's proposal on these amendments is based on the results of studies done by the State Urban Development Inspection in recent years. In particular, construction work at 1,865 out of 6,084 facilities examined in 2004-2008 was done without technical control of the quality of construction. It was mentioned that technical examination of buildings and structures is a complex engineering process that requires well-qualified personnel and modern equipment, whereas now any organization implementing scientific research and engineering research functions in seismic construction sector is allowed to make such an examination. As a result, in many cases the conclusions of two different organizations about the same building contradict each other.

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