Noise About the Initiative of Okruashvili’s Team

Lado Bitchashvili, Shida Kartli

“The city budget shall fund the kindergartens in the city and the district budget shall fund the kindergartens in the villages,” it was initiative of Irakli Okruashvili, advisor to the Gori City Council Chairman. The chairman spoke about the initiative with media. Ilia Metreveli, the chairman, believes it is not reasonable to spend funds from the city budget on the children, who are registered in the villages. The city council chairman requests the municipal administration to fund the children who live in the villages but go to the kindergartens in Gori. Otherwise, he does not exclude possibility that next year children will be recruited in the kindergartens according to their place of residence.

“The City Mayor Zurab Jirkvelishvili and his former deputy Nukri Jokhadze also requested the same. They addressed the district administration and requested to fund the tuition of village children in the city based kindergartens,” Ilia Metreveli said.

Gori district governor Davit Oniashvili said the initiative of the former defense minister Irakli Okruashvili is absurd.

“It is absurd and has no grounds because the city hall already received the funds for the city kindergartens from the central budget and the budget was allocated in accordance to the number of children in each kindergarten. The City Hall is obliged to spend the subsided funds on kids. If they forward those funds to other purposes, it will be violation of the law. I hope the City Hall and the City Council will be wise enough not to support such an absurd and illegal initiative,” Davit Oniashvili said.

393 kids in Gori kindergartens are residents of the district villages. In addition to that, there are children who live in other municipalities too.

The pre-school educational institutions are supervised by the education unit of the Gori City Hall; head of the unit Nino Berianidze said the local self-government shall not make prompt decision.

“It is important to consider the rights of children; consequently it will not be fair to implement rigid policy claiming that Gori based kindergartens shall serve only the kids registered in the city. It will cause many complications. The draft resolution speaks about voucher-based funding in educational institutions that will significantly complicate current situation – who will be Gori resident and who will receive the voucher.  The municipalities shall reach agreement; it does not apply only to the children registered in Gori district villages,” Nino Berianidze said.

The next session in the City Council is scheduled on April 1 and the issue of kindergartens is on the agenda. Director of Gori kindergarten # 1 Lali Baiadze said the initiative of the council chairman was a joke for April 1. “Since they have scheduled the session on April 1, it is apparently is a joke and nothing more. This project will fail and I do not expect anybody will support it,” Baiadze said.

City Council member from Free Democrats Tamar Tedliashvili is against the initiative and she is not going to support it during the session.