From 23 March to 20 April, the lawyers of the Armenian Lawyers’ Association (ALA) provided free consultation to citizens on 688 issues.
Considering the fact that on 16 March, the RA Government declared a state of emergency on the whole territory of the Republic of Armenia due to the spread of a new type of coronavirus, and a number of restrictions related to the labor rights, on 23 March ALA issued a statement on providing free legal advice and counselling to the citizens.
Lawyers of the ALA regional offices did not stay aside of this process. Ms Zarine Hovhannisyan, lawyer/coordinator of Vanadzor office, told that most of the questions were related mainly to anti-crisis measures. “There are many cases when specific situations are presented, and in such case the answers are given more clearly. Currently a large bulk of the issues is related to the technical problems in the system,” she said.
According to the lawyer, consulting is quite a time-consuming job. “Depending on what the question is about, the time for the response is different. Questions about anti-crisis programs are answered faster, and in the case questions related to other areas, it takes a longer time to study,” Zarine Hovhannisyan said.
She also mentioned that they receive complaints from citizens as well. Complaints are mainly due to the fact that they are not involved in any of the events, or when the dismissal does not coincide with the deadlines set by the Government.
Often the questions are in Latin letters, with incomplete questioning, and one of the difficulties in providing legal advice is that citizens are duly informed of their rights. “Of course, it is difficult to assess the level of legal awareness of citizens. In any case, I can say that we receive unspecified questions, incomplete formulations or incomprehensible content, but at the same time we have concrete, clearly formulated questions, sent by people who have a high level of legal awareness. There are various questions related to different legal issues,” the lawyer said, adding that they still continue to receive questions.
