Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan held a consultation on the prospects of paving the streets of rural communities.

Opening the discussion, the Prime Minister said: “Dear colleagues, we are here to discuss our actions aimed at building and rehabilitating inter-community roads. This is especially true for those communities that lack roads. Our task is to modernize the environment in rural communities, in general. And here we are facing the following problem: asphalting may be a solution to the problems faced in some villages, and we have seen in recent days that large-scale works are underway in many communities. But there are quite a few communities where we cannot build, pave or repair a road due to relief, climatic and other peculiarities. We need to discuss what we can do else to have normal streets in rural communities. First, we can resort to tiling, and I have already issued an instruction to that effect. But it turns out that different technologies are being used in the world, and in this respect, we have other options as well.”

Nikol Pashinyan noted that the reason for holding today’s discussion was what he had witnessed during the latest regional trips, namely that this program needs streamlining the functions and application mechanisms.

The meeting went on to discuss different models for repairing roads in rural communities. The Premier made a point of developing innovative solutions for effective use of local raw materials, including the stone resources available in Armenia. Different options for building intra-community and inter-community roads were discussed, from design to the implementation stage.

Issues related to the use of raw material processing technologies, the procurement of equipment, the program’s deadlines and financial aspects, the implementation format and mechanisms, as well as the development of standard guidelines were discussed during the meeting. The possibility of implementing a pilot program in one of Armenia’s rural communities rich in local raw materials was considered as a means to assess the proposal’s effectiveness and expediency. The Prime Minister instructed to submit a draft model based on the results of a specific community by the end of next week.