Gov’t launches process to replace slums near Batumi, housing 1,000 children

A construction tender has been announced to replace slums near Georgia’s coastal city of Batumi’s so-called ‘Dream Town’ or ‘Cardboard Town’ of eco-migrant families, currently housing about 1,000 children living in poor conditions.

• Adjara gov't to build residential buildings to replace slums near Batumi

Head of Adjara government Tornike Rizhvadze says that 16 million GEL [about 6 million USD] will be allocated from the 2020 state budget for the construction and at the first stage 580 families will receive modern flats.

The settlement was made in the autumn of 2012. Photo: RFE/RL. 

It has been one of the most severe social problems in Adjara for years which will be finally settled,” Rizhvadze has stated earlier today.

The current settlement was made on the former bases of 25th and 53rd Russian military battalion near Batumi, where eco-migrant families, who moved from the highlands of Adjara, settled in the autumn of 2012 - just after the Georgian Dream coalition’s victory in Georgia’s parliamentary elections.

They settled on the outskirts of the city in their own huts made of cardboard, where later people built concrete houses instead.