In recent years, the authorities consider the increase of salaries in all circles of the legal system to be one of the important components of the judicial reforms.
In October 2023, the National Assembly voted in favor of the decision to provide a salary supplement to the judges of the court of first instance from 1 January. It has been 2 months that judges have been receiving a bonus of 60 percent of their salary.
As Deputy Minister of Justice Levon Balyan stated in the National Assembly, 66 percent of judges (more than 200 judges) work in the First Instance Courts.
Both the Chairman of the Supreme Judicial Council and the representatives of the executive power have more than once spoken about the need to increase the salaries and social security of court employees. However, until now, there have been no changes regarding the increase in the salaries of employees in the judicial system.
In order to understand the existing problems Iravaban.net talked to the employees working in the staffs of various judges of both the First Instance Courts and the Court of Appeals, who ensure the normal operation of the judicial system. At their request, names will not be released.
According to a clerk working in one of the First Instance Courts of General Jurisdiction, there are cases when the morning working hours start earlier due to the proper organization of work, to somewhat alleviate the workload. He has been in the system for about 2 years.
“From the beginning, the work was very hard, we received 50-60, sometimes 100 cases a day, when it was August, 90% of the judges went on vacation. It even happened that we went to work on Sundays to make it. Now the problems are related to the archive, that is, when you finished the work, you put it aside, you did not manage to hand it over to the archive, and this is how it accumulates. A monthly salary of at least 220,000 drams should be planned for the clerk. It is possible even to encourage the best teams for the work they do,” our interlocutor said.
According to him, while working in one of the regional courts, the workload was the same, and if in Yerevan, cases are distributed among more than 40 judges, there, for example, in the case of termination of a judge’s powers or transfer to another seat, cases are divided between three or four judges, that is why the daily work of the staff is doubled.
According to the assistant of one of the judges, the salary of employees of the judicial system is even “excessively” low compared to other structures.
“For example, the clerk and the secretary of court sessions, who also stay longer than the working hours and work twelve hours, they receive approximately 120,000 drams, but all of them perform responsible and large-scale work,” he noted and added that, as before as well as currently there are talks about raising the salaries of judges’ staffs, but no significant changes have been made so far. “It has been circulating since the last year that salaries should increase to some extent in 2024. We are still waiting.”
According to the employees, there are no specific incentives for assistant judges, but for clerks and secretaries of court sessions, who are considered judicial officers, they receive an incentive of 70% of their salary every six months through the evaluation system. Judicial assistants do not receive bonuses because they hold a discretionary position, but receive a 13th salary at the end of the year, which is reserved for all state employees.
They have the right to go on vacation for 24 days a year, but they plan the vacation in such a way that all the employees of the court, both the judge and the three employees, are on vacation at the same time. “I only used ten days of my vacation last year, that was also because we are very busy and we try to take as little vacation as possible so that we can organize work properly and not be delayed too much.”
“I would like the salary of a judge’s assistant to be at least 400,000 drams, and for the secretary and clerk of court sessions to be at least 200,000 drams,” the assistant of one of the judges told us.
Iravaban.net talked to the employees of various judges staffs of the Court of Appeal, tried to understand their problems related to the workload and salary of the system.
They mentioned that the tight work schedule in 2024 has changed somewhat, and instead of the previous twelve hours, they now work from 09:00 am to 18:00 pm, as is the schedule of other workers.
“During the day, we write various decisions related to civil cases, send them, publish them in the judicial information system, if necessary, we provide certain information to citizens, lawyers, etc. There were even cases when we stayed longer than the working hours due to the volume of work,” one of the clerks working in the court said.
The Chairman of the Supreme Judicial Council, Karen Andreasyan, published his open letter to Santa Claus and all good people in December 2023. Andreasyan mentioned that he dreams that his 5 requests will be fulfilled in 2024. The 4th request was as follows: “…4. Court officials (assistant, secretary, bailiff, etc.) today receive a salary of 100-200 thousand drams and perform hard work that is extremely important for the destinies of all of you. I am asking you very and very much, let their salaries increase.”
It is not clear who, if not the judicial department, should increase the salary of the employees who ensure the normal operation of the judicial sector.
The reason for not giving an urgent solution to the mentioned problems is the attractiveness of working in the courts from the point of view of gaining work experience.
The employees of the system also suggest to consider the issue of expanding the composition of 3 judges.
Mariam Shahnazaryan
