Gardabani District Budget Tripled Funding of Local Police Department in the Election Year

Manon Bokuchava, Kvemo Kartli

There are five swallow nests on the second floor in the building of Gardabani District Administration. Part of windows does not have glasses and swallows can easily fly in and out of the building.

We do appreciate local officials’ humanity towards birds, but unpleasant spots of swallows are left on the old floor and on the windows in the district administration’s office. Maybe, the personnel trust in the old proverb – this unpleasant thing “brings fortune.”

Maybe, swallows have brought benefit to this year budget of Gardabani district.

Although the revenue of the district budget was increased at 4 million lari in comparison with last year, according to the data of July 2012 we see that expenses of Gardabani district administration were also tripled. The district budget is unprecedentedly generous with the MIA offices.  This year, Gardabani district budget allocated 1, 084 000 lari to the district police office while last year local law enforcement offices received only 361 000 lari from the district budget.

Gardabani district administration covers set of expenditures of Bacho Akhalaia’s ministry in the district. They are: office, communication, fuel, electricity, water and natural air expenses. Attentive self-governmental agency does not forget that police officers have to actively travel by cars and they transferred money to the police stations for the purchase of car spare parts.

This year, Gardabani district budget was particularly attentive in other direction too. They allocated 1 620 000 lari for the reconstruction of non-residential buildings in 2012. Last year, this problem was not priority for the local authority and they had allocated only 39 000 lari on the purpose. The district budget doubled funds for renovation of roads and it amounted to 3 million lari. Funds for the Rehabilitation of Gardabani District Infrastructure were also doubled and exceeded 10 million lari.

2012 expenses of Gardabani district administration were increased from 9 to 20 million lari. The expenses of the municipal board also increased. In 2011, Gardabani district administration had a budget of 2 512 800 lari and this year it amounted to 4 544 700 lari.

Three million more will be spent on the representative and executive bodies of Gardabani district; 6 million lari is allocated for them.

Human Rights Center got in touch with Giorgi Peikrishvili, chairman of the Gardabani Municipal Board for the comment. He forwarded us to the head of budget commission at the municipal board. The head of the commission Valeri Ivaniashvli refrained from making comments. “This issue is within competence of Nika Duchidze, head of financial service at Gardabani City Hall (district administration),” Ivaniashvili said.

After one-hour waiting, having heard our questions Nikoloz Duchidze replied to us that he would not comment on the issue. The head of financial service of Gardabani district administration noted that public service does not oblige him to cooperate with journalists and asked us to leave his office.

So, three public servants refused us to comment on the most important fiscal document of the district. We tried to communicate with them to publish their position and to check all information we had obtained from the Sakanonmdeblo Matsne.

Unfortunately, we left Gardabani after four-day work without learning anything about trends of Gardabani district budget except the version related with swallows.