AWstats updates require unwanted work-around

[Visnet]

Situation/issues:
1. Plesk is using a bundled version of AWstats (awstats-7.3-14070712.parallels.noarch)
2. A newer version of AWstats was released in the EPEL channel (awstats-7.4-1.el7.noarch)
3. Installing the newer version causes Plesk's web statistic scripts (e.g. "plesk sbin web_statistic_executor") to fail
4. AWstats statistics are no longer calculated

Possible (but unwanted and unsupported) work-around:
1. Create a symbolic link, for example:
# ln -s /var/www/html/awstats /usr/share/awstats/wwwroot/
2. Edit '/etc/psa/psa.conf' and change the following variables to the values below:
AWSTATS_BIN_D /usr/share/awstats/wwwroot/cgi-bin
AWSTATS_TOOLS_D /usr/share/awstats/tools
AWSTATS_DOC_D /usr/share/awstats/wwwroot
3. (optional) If you don't want to wait until Plesk's nightly cron is executed, execute statistics generating manually:
# plesk sbin web_statistic_executor

The Plesk KB article at https://kb.plesk.com/en/952 mentions that '/etc/psa/psa.conf' is not meant to be modified.
How can Plesk use AWstats updates without breaking its configuration?

Lastly, the old/default values: (as a reference, contain non-existent paths):
# grep -i 'awstats' /etc/psa/psa.conf.default
AWSTATS_BIN_D /var/www/cgi-bin/awstats
AWSTATS_TOOLS_D /usr/share/awstats
AWSTATS_DOC_D /var/www/html/awstats