Gov’t gifts new homes to 20 internally displaced families

A further 20 internally displaced families now live in better conditions after they were gifted brand new apartments from the state.

Today Georgia’s Minister of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) from the Occupied Territories, Accommodation and Refuges, Sozar Subari, met the families who received new flats in capital Tbilisi’s Didi Dighomi district.

The flats were part of a newly built residential complex. Six were one-room apartments, 10 were two-room apartments and four were three-room apartments.

For many years these and other IDPs lived in sub-standard, sometimes communal, privately-owned homes where they had to pay rent while they lived in poor conditions.

Over the past few years the IDPs Ministry has worked hard to improve the living conditions of these vulnerable people.

The Ministry already purchased 431 flats in capital Tbilisi, out of which 231 have already been gifted to IDPs. The remaining 200 apartments will be handed to the vulnerable population later this year.

All of Georgia’s IDPs are either from Abkhazia or Tskhinvali (South Ossetia) – two regions of Georgia that are currently occupied by Russia. Both regions are in the north of Georgia and border Russia, and each area has a non-Georgian population.

Ethnic and political difficulties have led to the expulsion of Georgians from these territories, sometimes quite violently. Many people fled with only what they could carry, leaving for an uncertain future in other parts of Georgia.

Currently there are about 280,000 of IDPs in Georgia; about 6 percent of the country’s total population.