The Human Rights Center Requests Criminal Liability for Ineffective Expenditure of the International Grant

The Human Rights Center requests to launch criminal case on the ineffective expenditure of the grant allocated by the Dutch government for Georgia. The grant was to be spent on the reduction of the risk-factors of outdated pesticides in Kakheti region. However, the human rights organization states the Georgian side failed the project.

“The project was implemented by the Georgian non-governmental organization “Priority Direction for Poverty Reduction”. The founder and manager of the NGO is Khatuna Akhalaia, who is also a chief specialist at the department of remains and chemical substances within the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources of Georgia. Khatuna Akhalaia participated in the first stage of the project as an expert. On the second stage, Akhalaia was project manager. Within the project, her monthly salary was 540 Euro. In parallel to it, she received salary at the ministry too that contradicts the law. Within the project the territory was to be cleaned from pesticides and the soil was to be restored; however, only the pesticides in sacks were withdrawn from the ware-house of poisons. Those poisons and chemicals which poison people, cause cancer and inborn diseases, pollutes water, food and air, are still scattered in the region,” said the representatives of the human rights organization.

They said the results of the project were to be studied by the ministry of environment and natural resources. The ministry was entitled to control the timely and corresponding implementation of the activities envisaged under the project; however, the ministry did not control the process at all.

You can read the journalistic investigation on the ineffective expenditure of the international grant on the following link:

 http://www.ick.ge/ka/jinvestigation/2296-2010-08-05-06-58-06.html

http://www.humanrights.ge/index.php?a=articles&page=2&lang=en