In January the Price of Water will Increase in Batumi, though the Quality of Water Remains Unchanged

In Batumi, the monthly price of water will increase by 65 tetri. After January, a person should pay 1.85 lari instead of the previous 1.20 lari. The bill was increased only for residents and not for state and commercial organizations. State organizations will continue to pay 3.5 lari and commercial ones, 4 lari.

Last week in Batumi, TskalKanali Ltd [the water company] petitioned the Batumi Administrative Board to increase the price of residential water and that request was immediately approved without any discussion.
 
Batumi TskalKanali Ltd explained that the upcoming repairs of the water system forced the increase in the bill. The German Credit Organization, KFW, is about to finance the repairs with 73 million euros. "Batumi City Hall cannot fund the repairs of the system itself. Therefore, we took out a loan to be repaid over forty years' time from this organization, and we will have to begin making payments after 2014," said Zaur Fataladze, director of the Batumi TskalKanali. He added that the bank demanded an increase in the water bills as a condition of the loan. "According to our agreement with the German side, the bills will increase gradually. Otherwise, they would have refused to give us the loan. Although they asked for us to increase the bills several months ago, we could not do that until after elections were held," said Fataladze.

Batumi TskalKanali promised residents to supply them with high quality water after the completion of repairs expected to take seven years. 

The Chairman of Adjara Office of the Economists Association, Tire Aroshidze, said "The bill estimated by Tskalkanali and the Administrative Board is not well-defined. We do not know the true cost of water. Besides that, the water company is run by the Batumi City Hall, and consequently the City Hall should have been the guarantor for the loan and not the residents. Financing for the project should be arranged by the water company and not by the residents…"

Batumi residents protest their increased water bills. "Families have almost no income and the increased bills will put them in a worse situation. Besides that, the water is not safe.  When it rains, we have no water at all, because the water becomes muddy. We wonder how they could increase the bills," the people asked.