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One-family village

May 21, 2019
 
Lado Bitchashvili, Shida Kartli

The trace of the 2008 August War is still visible in the Kobi village in Khashuri municipality, which is located alongside the occupation line. Ethnic Ossetian families lived in the village. In 1990s, all houses were burnt in Kobi village as a result of ethnic conflict. After the military operations, only some of the 30 families managed to return back but they could not cope with hard social conditions and left village again. Only one family remained in Kobi village. 

Geno Bosikov lives in Kobi village together with his wife. For years, regardless hard living conditions, they do not abandon the village and continue living there. The road to Kobi village is in poor conditions. Since 2001 to present, the family never had electricity even for a single day. They have to fetch water from the hill-top well. As Genadi Bosikov said, the village is absolutely isolated from the rest of the world in winter. Only one positive thing was done by the in the past years when the one-family village was supplied gas. 

“There are no living conditions. Our neighbors arrived but could not stay here and left. There is no water, no electricity and they could not stay. Government pays little attention to us. Only police comes here and examines the zone alongside the occupation line, that is all,” Geno Bosikov said. 

Kobi village is one among the Tsagvli community villages. Although all of them have the status of mountainous zone and inhabitants enjoy the state benefits, it cannot hinder the migration that affects demographic situation too. The personnel of the Tsagvli village outpatients, which serves the entire community, said that only 12 children were born in the entire community in 2018, while no child was born yet in 2019.  There are eight villages in the community: Tsagvli, Kldistskaro, Tsegveri, Upper Brolosani, Lower Brolosani, Pitnis Tskaro, Murkanis Tskaro, Chorchana and Kobi.

Monitoring group of HRC visited four out of eight villages. First time, they visited Tsagvli village. A local showed abandoned houses to the HRC representatives to underline the problem of migration in their village. 

The personnel of Tsagvli village outpatients, which serve the all eight villages in the community, have to work in the semi-destroyed building. The walls are cracked and in rainy days the rain leaks into the building. They do not have adequate conditions to provide the patients with first medical aid on the place. The inhabitants of Tsagvli village speak about many more problems. 

“We receive water supply according to schedule and it gets particularly problematic in summer. We also request outdoor garbage bins in the village. Although we throw garbage on one place and they take it once a week, the place is site of anti-sanitary and creates serious problems for us,” one of the locals said.  

The road to the village needs rehabilitation; there is concrete road in the village but the mini-bus, which runs between Khashuri and Tsagvli twice a day stops in the entrance to the village and the locals have to walk quite a long distance from the last bus stop to their houses.

You have to travel through Kldistskaro to reach Chorchana. Here too, locals speak about hard social-economic problems and request attention from the authority. Khashuri-Kldistskaro rout bus runs to the village once a week. 

“Because of bad road and long distance, ambulances cannot reach the village or are very late. There were several incidents in the village, when a patient died because the ambulance could not come here on time,” the local said.

The families have only wells in their yards in Kldistskaro. There is no kindergarten and outpatients in the village for what they can hardly go to Tsagvli based doctor to take their children for vaccination. 
The people in Chorchana also spoke about the same problems: damaged roads, water supply problem, unemployment, high migration. At the same time, the village is very close to the occupation line. As locals said, there is marble and powder deposits outside the village close to the occupation line, where all mine works are stopped. The locals said if the mining is resumed, they will get jobs and the migration process will reduce.  

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