No social justice without equal access to education - Nikol Pashinyan 

ArmInfo.It is difficult to imagine social justice without fair access to education, Armenian  Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on November 5 at the conference "The Path to Social Justice: Decent Work".

According to the Prime Minister, a significant part of the problems  arising in the field of social justice are related to access to  education or the quality of education. At the same time, he  emphasized, education should be understood in a broader context,  since in this case the most important component is the set of skills  and abilities to manage one's life, the cornerstone of which is,  first of all, the accessibility and quality of the general education  sector.

<And today in our country, unfortunately, there are problems in this  area, as in many countries of the world, when education or quality  education is not equally accessible to everyone, and this is one of  the most important problems that the Armenian government is solving,  trying to solve>, Pashinyan said, noting that the Cabinet of  Ministers' program for the construction, reconstruction or major  repairs of 500 kindergartens and 300 schools, as well as the  Akademgorodok project are aimed at solving this problem.

The Prime Minister acknowledges the reality that in many cases, lack  of access to childcare is a barrier to women getting an education,  running a business and developing their skills. <I do not want to  criticize the importance of regulation, the policy pursued by the  government in the social sphere and in the field of social justice,  in the field of labor, but I think that at each level that will be  discussed here, the education component is and should be of great  importance, because at any age a person may face a lack of skills or  problems in managing his or her life, and our policy should support,  help people so that they have more opportunities," Nikol Pashinyan  said.

According to the budget message for 2025, in 2021-2023 the  unemployment rate decreased from 15.5% to 12.6%, and the number of  employees increased by an average of 5%. However, according to the  results of the first quarter of 2024, unemployment amounted to 15.5%,  increasing by 1.8 percentage points compared to the same period of  2023, and the employment rate decreased by 2.2 percentage points to  8.7%. In particular, for In January-July of this year, the number of  unemployed reached 44,063 people, an annual increase of 4.5%, during  the same period, the number of hired workers increased by 5.5%, and  the average monthly nominal salary increased by 6.7% - to 280  thousand 066 drams. The growth of real wages was approximately 7%  (with a 0.3% decrease in the consumer price index), nominal wages in  the public sector increased by 10.5% - to 216 thousand 251 drams, and  in the private sector amounted to 305 thousand 674 drams (an increase  of 5.4%).