YEREVAN, MAY 11, NOYAN TAPAN. Yerevan cultural institutions have triple subordination: some of them belong to Mayor's Office, some to communal administrations and the third part to the Ministry of Culture, which has rather a negative impact on the organization of work in the sphere of culture. Arman Sahakian, Deputy Yerevan Mayor, declared this at the May 10 press conference. According to him, the status of organizations of the cultural sphere hasn't been specified yet, there are no normative acts regulating their activity. As a result of this any of this departments systematizes the activity of organizations subordinate to it in its own way. A.Sahakian expressed an opinion that Yerevan cultural centers should be sobordinate to one department and the Ministry of Culture and Youth Affairs should work out state cultural policy and not have institutions in its subordination. According to the Deputy Yerevan Mayor, 37 cultural centers are subordinate to the Mayor's Office. They are mainly financed from the state budget. This year the financing of the cultural centers subordinate to the Mayor's Office increased by 30 mln drams compared with 2004 and made 200 mln drams (nearly 455 thousand dollars). He also reported that 12 out of 25 music and art schools functioning in Yerevan are subordinate to the Mayor's Office. Nearly 1.8 thousand teachers work and nearly 10 thousand pupils learn there.

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