Impoverished Families Were Omitted from the List

In Adjara, many impoverished families who were involved in the poverty program have not received any aid from the Government yet. They state at the Social Agency that they forgot to include those families in the list.

'Social Agent included old Soviet TV and oven in the property declaration. Though, we were selected to get allowances,"-stated Fati Bolkvadze. 'They started to give allowances but we are not on the list. We have only health polices. My child should be operated on. I wonder if they would operate him, while I can hardly get medicines for epilepsy. If they do not aid me, whom do they grant allowances to?!"

Luka is eight-year-old disabled child of the second group [according to the disability level classification] and suffers from epilepsy. "He goes to school for children with epilepsy. Although Luka is eight, his mind is developed up to three-year-old child,"-said the mother. His twenty-three lari allowance for disability is only income for the family. They live in a wooden hut in Lermontov str. in Batumi. They are afraid that the Government would make them leave the house which they have built illegally. Initially they did not want to speak about their problems.

The Bolkvadzes applied to Social Agency as soon as the program was launched. However they have not received any aid so far.
 
They state at the agency that the reason for the misunderstanding is having forgotten  Bilkvadzes from the list. "We have investigated living conditions of thousands of families in the city. Thus we do not exclude that several of them were omitted. We will study their situation again,"-stated Nodar Makaradze, Chief of the Social Agency.

Neither Zurab Davitadze can receive aid. He is also disabled person of the second group and receives only disability pension. Social Agency has granted him with free medicines and health police, as well as electricity voucher for 37kiolvats. He said it is only formality.

"I have received no free medicines. Everywhere they answer the same - Government has not allocated money and they can not cut prices on medicine for me. I pay as much for electricity as I used to. The same situation is with the health police. Poor people were paid more attention during the previous government,"-stated Zurab Davitadze.

The Government has selected only 499 families out of 7 800 impoverished ones in Batumi. Among them there were the Bolkvadzes and Davitadzes, however they haven't received allowances so far. Amount of the allowances these people should have received is thirty lari. Additional twelve lari is apportioned for each family member. Thus Fati Bolkvadze's family with four members was to get 78 lari per month.

Repeated survey and granting corresponding category will take another three months.

Maka Malakmadze, Batumi