A company in Armenia that was paid 10.284 million drams ($25,448) in December to supply seventy-five weather resistant park benches to the Yerevan Municipality has used inferior and cheaper materials instead.

The company in question, SEM2017, used cheaper pine wood that was merely varnished instead of the much more durable wood and plastic composite it promised the Yerevan Municipality.

Fifty of the benches installed in a Yerevan park are already in need of repair.

Local furnituremakers we talked to, who requested anonymity, say the supplied benches are made of ordinary pine wood that’s been given a coat of varnish.

Thus, the cost of the material used to produce one bench is 30,000 drams, not the 70,000 drams envisaged for the durable composite.