Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stated during a government session that public assistance should prioritize working individuals and encourage the unemployed to seek employment.

“This is the problem. Fine, we gave them bread for a day, for two days… ten days. But whose money are we using to provide that bread? The funds that form the state budget come from workers, so we must support them, and motivate non-workers to enter the workforce,” he said, as reported by Aysor.am .

According to Pashinyan, the only sustainable way to ensure employment is through education.

He added that he was curious whether there are families in Armenia who have been registered as socially vulnerable for the past three decades.

“I am convinced that such families exist. I’ve asked the Minister of Labor and Social Affairs to investigate how many such individuals and families there are. Can you imagine someone being a welfare recipient for 30 years? That’s an utter disrespect to that person. We are making poverty hereditary, embedding it in their blood,” said the Prime Minister.