Georgian IDPs Hopeless, Abandoned and Hungry

The Georgian government is unable to effectively provide humanitarian assistance to IDPs. IDPs residing in the building of public school # 48 in the Temka district, Tbilisi,  contacted the Human Rights Center to report their plight and told their sad story of being abandoned; they have not received any food assistance for the last three days and don’t know when they will be helped.

Emzar Karkusovi, an IDP: “We applied to every institutions but nobody is paying attention to us. Already for three days we have not had food assistance. They brought some bread only yesterday and provided only two loaves of bread for the population of one village. We lack many other necessary items; people living in Tbilisi have assisted someone and provided us brought with some goods, and that is all that we have been supplied. There is no toilet facilities and drainage system in the building that we are staying. Workers showed up and pretended to have made some repair the system but it soon broke it and they went away.

We cannot receive medical aid while we have a disabled person in our building and another IDP in the school that we are residing needs an operation. We visited the Ministry of Health Care and showed needed prescriptions to them. The officials at the ministry recorded our data but there but no assistance has been forthcoming.  We also applied to Gldani-Nadzaladevi district administration but they stated that they had done all what they can do for us.”

At the moment only 92 IDPs have remained out of 120 IDPs at Public School 48; those people were from Gori and have returned to their homes. Those who remained in the school come from the villages that are still under the controlled by Russian troops; those villages are Kurta, Mereti, Tirdznisi, Ditsi, Arbo. The IDPs state that three people visited them who introduced themselves as representatives of NGOs and suggested that they return to their villages.

However, these representatives were most rude: they told us go and to go now, and that we should understand that sooner or later you will have to depart from this place. However, in spite of their claims, we do not think that it is safe for us to return to our homes,” said Emzar Karkusov.

Human Rights Centre