Municipality does not Take People's Protest into Consideration

In Batumi, residents of the Farnavazi Street complain about the heavy traffic which has resulted from turning the road into one-way street. They have applied to Batumi Municipality in vain.

"Our Street is very narrow and one-way movement made it very busy. There are no traffic lights there and the movement is not controlled at all."

"Children can not cross the street easily to get to school. Car accidents have also increased lately. We want the minibuses run in other streets," said the resident of the Farnavazi Street.

Previously, it was double-way street. However, because of poor conditions of the road cars did not move there.

In spring, the municipality decided to make Era and Farnavazi Streets one-way. Although the streets were a bit repaired, no traffic signs were installed there to control the movement.  Eka Targamadze, the Chief of the Economical Police Service Department within the Batumi Municipality, told us that she was not informed about the fact at all.

"Our officials will arrive at the place and study the situation. If there are no traffic signs, we will install them," said Targamadze.

The Municipality does not intend to reduce traffic by replacing some of the transports to other streets. They call the people's demands to be complaints and say that "the population has got used to quiet in the centre of the town. Our goal is to develop the city infrastructure through establishing one-way movement on this street."

Maka Malakmadze, Batumi