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Residents of Gori District Villages Protest Selling of Reserve Lan

December 25, 2015
 
Lado Bitchashvili, Shorena Bitchikashvili, Shida Kartli

Locals protested sale of the reserve lands in Ditsi village of Gori municipality. According to the villagers, they used the land as pasture. According to Ditsi population, in 1991-1992 when privatization of plots started in Georgia, each family in Ditsi gave up per plot to create reserve land as a pasture in the village. Total space of the reserve land was 124 hectares. 81 hectares of it was privatized by an Indian farmer and the locals protested this fact. The Ditsi residents used to take their cattle to the pasture in the neighboring village Ergneti but recently people started to cultivate the pasture land in Ergneti too. Now, Ditsi residents request their reserve lands back.

“In the village, we do not have other source of income except our cattle farms but we cannot take cows to the pasture because the territory is selfishly cultivated. We used the land as pasture. We demand them back otherwise we will appeal to the court or start demonstrations,” local Gia Mdzinarashvili said.

Gori district governor Davit Oniashvili met the protesters and informed them that lease contract term on the part of the pastures had expired while another part was still leased out.

“Nobody is calculating the land about which the Ditsi residents are speaking now. Last year it was cultivated – it is 17 hectares of the land from the village reserve, on which the lease contract had  expired and they belong to the Ministry of Economy. Since 2008 the lease contract was annulled on 17 hectares of the village reserve land but they were still cultivated,” Murman Badashvili, the village attorney, said.

Gori district governor Davit Oniashvili said the person, who had leased the 17 hectares of the reserve land, has died and his descendant applied to the district administration for the privatization of the land but they refused considering the opinion of the local population.

Residents of Dzevera village also request the reserve lands back. They claim the lands were illegally leased out and the village was left without pasture.
“Lands of our village were sold; we do not have place for cemetery either,” local Rusudan Melkuashvili said.
Deputy regional governor and representative of the district administration arrived in the village to meet protesters. Representative of the legal service of the Gori district administration said the former government made a mistake when they leased out such plots; as for the private leaser, his legal rights were not violated.

“We will study the case in details before making more clarifications about it. Now the only thing we know is that the plots were sold on the auction in 2012,” deputy regional governor Ioseb Okromelidze said.

Head of the legal service Revaz Gogiashvili said the land is sold to a private owner and his rights are protected by the Constitution and the law.
“I looked through the documents and everything was done legally; however the state had incorrect approach to the issue when they decided to sell village pastures,” Revaz Gogiashvili said.
Dzevera village residents request the lands back otherwise they will block the central motorway.

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