3 bottles of vegetable oil: New Year’s gift
Ahead of the New Year, the Armenian government will give 116,000 socially disadvantaged families a surprise for the holidays by providing each family with 3 bottles of sunflower vegetable oil.
"We are helping 116,000 families before the holidays, but this will be ongoing," RA Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan said during an ensuing government session.
Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Artur Grigoryan added that "this was simply a show of good will."
The government says this new decision should make people happy.
Why is the government only providing vegetable oil? In response, Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Artur Grigoryan said: "I can't say why those families only needed vegetable oil and whether they will be satisfied or not, but I don't think it is bad that we are providing them with the vegetable oil that we had stored."
The Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs has procured the sunflower vegetable oil from the reserve fund of the Ministry of Emergency Situations.
Artur Grigoryan explained that the government didn't have different types of food in its storage in order to "distribute".
"I am certain that if there were other types of foods in such a condition, perhaps there would have been a different decision and they would be distributed in the form of social benefits," Minister Grigoryan mentioned.
The government hadn't undertaken such initiatives in previous years. What was the motive? In response, Artur Grigoryan said: "Frankly, there is no motive for this. There was stored vegetable oil and it was decided to provide it to those families as a gift before the holidays."
