Georgian PM: Kartli sanatorium IDPs to receive new housing by end of year "unconditionally"
On January 16, an incident at the former Kartli sanatorium building resulted in death of IDP Zurab Chichoshvili after the resident of the venue jumped out of the window of his flat in the building. Photo: Dato Koridze (RFE/RL)
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Families of internally displaced persons who have been residing in the dilapidated Kartli sanatorium building will "unconditionally" recessive new housing by the end of 2022 to solve the long-running issue, prime minister Irakli Garibashvili announced on Monday.
Speaking at today's government meeting, Garibashvili presented options the Agency for Internally Displaced Persons, Ecomigrants and Livelihood would offer the residents of the former sanatorium venue.
Resulting from the IDP agency's work on relocating the families to a safe residence, the PM said they would be offered two options: they can find alternative flats in capital Tbilisi - within the price of the equivalent of $550 in Georgian Lari per square metre - to be purchased for them by the agency, or live on rent covered by the agency while new flats built for them are completed.
The prime minister talked about the "chaotic" situation in the country before 2012 in terms of IDP issues, as well as various programmes and alternatives launched since then to offer the families new residence options.
We started an intense process of purchasing apartments for IDP families in newly built buildings from October 1, 2012, along with large-scale constructions to provide [new] housing for IDP families”, Garibashvili said at the government meeting.
Zurab Azarashvili, the Minister of Internally Displaced Persons from the Occupied Territories, Labor, Health and Social Affairs of Georgia, also commented on the programme, noting the ministry had started negotiations with various construction companies for providing new flats to the IDPs. The "critical" situation of the former sanatorium building had prompted the ministry to designate ongoing construction projects - with about 200 flats - as the alternative residential space for the families, and was in talks for facilitating the initiative, the minister added.
Yesterday we made a more detailed statement on how we are going to provide the IDPs with flats. It is important to meet the needs of the IDPs who are in particularly critical living conditions. We have various, very active measures in this direction. We have already selected the state-owned land plots for the most critical [cases] in Tbilisi, Rustavi, Kutaisi and various other cities, and the process of transferring these lands to the municipalities and the Property Management Agency is underway," Azarashvili announced.
On January 16, an incident at the former Kartli sanatorium building resulted in death of IDP Zurab Chichoshvili after the resident of the venue jumped out of the window of his flat in the building.
More than 18,000 IDP families were provided by the government with new housing between 2004-2012, while since 2012 the number has exceeded 27,000.