Refugee families living in squalor gifted new homes

Dozens of refugee families living in critical conditions in an abandoned sanatorium in Georgia’s Shida Kartli region and other vulnerable refugee families will soon start a new life in new apartment buildings, gifted by the state.

Georgia’s Deputy Ministers of Internally Displaced Persons from the Occupied Territories, Accommodation and Refugees Shota Rekhviashvili and Mamuka Tsotniashvili today met with refugee families living in an old sanatorium settlement in Surami, near Khashuri township.

"Today we have visited internally displaced persons in Surami who live in terrible conditions. We promised them their problems would be solved very soon,” Rekhviashvili said.

In recent years 52 families had lived in this settlement in "terrible conditions”, Deputy Minister Rekhviashvili said. However this would soon change and the old facility would soon be demolished, stated the Levan Samkharauli National Forensic Bureau.

But these vulnerable families would not be thrown out on the street. Instead they would receive accommodation in newly rehabilitated buildings in Khashuri. Rekhviashvili said the Ministry had already started reconstruction of two buildings to house the new tenants, one being a former hospital building.

Overall, 110 families will be offered new accommodation in the two seven-storey buildings. It is believed it will take ten months to complete the reconstruction work before the refugee families can move into their new homes.

As well as these two apartment blocks, Deputy Minister Rekhviashvili noted other large-scale renovation projects were also planned.

"In the near future another construction is planned in Khashuri on Saakadze St, which will be the same scale as this one,” he said.

"After the second residential building is constructed, the problems of refugees in Khashuri will be completely solved. Local refugee families are very actively involved in the construction process and will be employed on the construction of their own homes,” he said.