IDP Families Receive New Flats for the New Year
TBILISI- Hundreds of internally displaced families here in Georgia will be receiving new apartments for the New Year.
400 IDP families were last week granted flats in newly constructed buildings across Tbilisi. In addition, it has been announced that applications for new flats in the central Georgian city of Gori will open for a further 480 families from January 3rd.
At a ceremony on Dadiani street on December 26 Mayor David Narmania and Sozar Subari, Minister of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) from the Occupied Territories, Accommodation, and Refugees, half of the 400 families in Tbilisi were officially handed the ownership of their new homes.
“One week ago we granted apartments to 400 IDP families,” Mr. Subari said in a statement concerning the newer, 480-family grant. “Of those 400 apartments , 200 are located by Tbilisi Sea and 200 of them are in the center of Tbilisi, on Dadiani Street. The apartments will be allocated according to the wishes of the IDPs, by means of a ballot system, although ground floors will be granted to people with disabilities. The building will have an entrance adapted for PWDs. 200 families will be able to meet the New Year at their new homes. As for remaining 200 families, those receiving apartments by Tbilisi will possibly be able to greet the Old New Year there (January 14th).”
Of the 200 apartments on Dadiani Street, 148 are single-room, 27 are double-room and 25 are three-room apartments.
Since 2012, 1,800 families have been provided with living spaces by the government to compensate for homes lost behind occupation lines. There are 263,598 IDPs in all, according to latest available statistics (2015).
The prime minister, in a year’s end speech at the government meeting December 29th, claimed that around 13,700 IDP and 300 so-called “eco-migrant” families have received apartments in total since 2012, and that some 1,700 further families will be able to move into new apartments in this coming year.
As for the 1,360 families which have announced their preference to stay in village regions across Georgia and pursue an agriculture-centered life, the government intends to purchase houses worth 17,000-31,000 GEL and offer them in lieu of urban apartments.
By Natia Liparteliani