Economy Minister: partnership with water management company, pipeline investigation “not within Ministry’s mandate”

Georgian Economy Minister Levan Davitashvili on Thursday said his office's relationship with Aqualia, a Spanish water management company that owns 80 percent of Georgian Water and Power, was intended to ensure the company’s “adequate” investment activities and “quality” water supply for the population, and rejected suggestions of his office's mandate in determining accountability in an investigation launched today into damage sustained by the central pipeline of the GWP that left a significant number of households in capital Tbilisi without supply earlier this week.

This is not the mandate of the Ministry [...] I believe there is full cooperation in place so that the company can quickly and adequately fulfil its tasks and provide the population with quality water supply”, Davitashvili said.

The investigation has been launched under articles related to “damage or destruction of an object through negligence” and “causing significant environmental damage through illegal actions”, after the company said the area of the pipeline had been filled with bulk material by third parties, creating a “large, geologically unstable land slope” at the spot that supposedly led to the damage to the network.

Efforts to resolve the interruption in supply have been ongoing for several days, with service restored to some districts of the city.