Salome Achba
Project “Social Accommodation in Nice Environment” aimed to construct European style residential buildings for the socially disabled people. Nowadays, 52 families live in similar residential buildings in Tbilisi. Several beneficiaries, who were left beyond the “list of the selected,” think that the houses were assigned unfairly. The Kupravas expressed their discontent severely – they started sedentary protest demonstration in front of the former building of the Russian Embassy and requested asylum from the government of Russia.
The project was funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and organized by the Tbilisi City Hall; it started in 2007 and still continues. Similar projects were implemented in Serbia and Armenia too. Initially, only IDPs were to be accommodated in the social buildings. But later, other socially disabled families were also lodged into the buildings alongside the IDPs in Tbilisi.
“We offered the donor organizations to estimate quotas for selection the families. According to our suggestions, 60 percent of the flats were to be assigned to IDP families and 40 percent to non-IDP families. They accepted our suggestion and the IDP and non-IDP families did not compete each other during the selection-process because they were selected according to preliminarily estimated quotas,” stated Gia Mamrikishvili, the head of the social service and healthcare department of the City Hall.
Initially, 28 families were selected; 10 local and 14 IDP families received comfortable flats on the second stage. The families can live in the houses until they have status of socially disabled.
The criteria were worked out by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation together with the Georgian Association of Social Workers.
“Our agency was directly involved in the selection process. Our experienced social workers accompanied our partners during the visits in families. They estimated the compliance of the concrete family to the criteria. We had three main criteria: the family was to be registered in Tbilisi, they were to be socially disabled and should not own private house,” said Tamar Tsivtsivadze, chief coordinator of the humanitarian programs at the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.
The problem originated as soon as the number of the selected beneficiaries was much higher than the number of flats. The problem was resolved by ballot and 10 out of more than 1000 beneficiaries were selected. “These families did not differ from each other by their social conditions. Thus, we had to select the families only in the ballot,” said Gia Mamrikishvili.
Part of the families who were on the list of beneficiaries, but were not selected among the 52 families, express their discontent. The Kupravas are one of those families. They think the state does not take care of their citizens and they seek asylum in Russia.
“In fact our state doomed us; they turned back to us. We petitioned to the Tbilisi City Hall to assign accommodation to us. They promised but did not give us any flat. We have to seek asylum in Russia,” said Giorgi Kuprava and asked us whether President Medvedev and Prime-Minister Putin will read their petition.
The Kupravas lived in the street in front of the former Russian Embassy for 22 days. They said they cannot pay the rent of the flat and now have nowhere to go. So, they intended to stay in the street until the state satisfied their request.
Apparently, the Kupravas could not endure the life in the street for a long time and since neither Georgian nor Russian governments paid attention to them, they found different solution to their problem – they took their pensions of several months in advance and rented a flat. It is natural that the money will be spent soon and the Kupravas will have to stay in the street again.
The Tbilisi City Hall suggests the families who were left without accommodation at the first stage to wait for the next one. The second stage will supposedly start at the end of the year.
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