Municipality Refuses to Reconstruct Roofs of Low Storey Buildings

According to decision, made by the Tbilisi local government, finances for reconstruction of low storey building roofs will not be granted. The priority is given to high storey buildings. Population talks about political base of this decision and says that with this move local government tries to gather votes of people, who live in the blocks. The number of this population is higher.

In order to help development of the collectives of house owners, civil service ‘Block of Tbilisi’ was established on the 9th of June, 2004. The aim of the service was to establish collectives in every block of houses and in case of breaking any facilities, inhabitants would collect and pay 10% of costs. Left 90% would be covered by ‘Block of Tbilisi’.

Collectives, whose appeals would not be met, had the right to submit their application again. From the beginning, reconstruction of houses was made in order, and the number of storey had no meaning. On the 31st of March, the Local Government made a decision to refuse rebuilding of low storey buildings and priority was given to high blocks of houses.

This decision was followed by the protest of inhabitants and by the ‘Association of Energy-Service Clients’. As said by the members of this organization: “Less people leave in low storey house and collecting 10% of the whole sum, needed for reconstruction, is more expensive for them, then for people who live in high blocks. This decision is discriminative and does not pay attention to the interests of inhabitants”.

The rights of inhabitants, living in a low houses are often violated, as most of them has already established the collective, which takes lot of effort, money and energy.

“They are going to spend 11,5 million GEL on high blocks. It is pre-election decision. Low storey buildings are usually roofed with more expensive material, then materials which are used to cover top of the high block houses. That is why, they have chosen high storey buildings, more people are living there; so they try to attract more voters with such move. This is discriminative decision. And the reason is that less people live in low storey buildings and reconstructing small houses costs more,” – says Jano Managadze, head of one of the collectives.

The Human Rights Information and Documentation Centre contacted chief of ‘Tbilisi Block’ Zurab Kikaleishvili. According to him, Tbilisi Municipality will take care of low storey buildings, when roofs of high blocks are finished. “More then 30 000 houses need to be renewed in Tbilisi. Decision of reconstructing roofs of high storey buildings was made by Tbilisi Local Government, which is our superior body. We will renovate low storey buildings afterwards”.

Tbilisi Municipality does not have official data of the number of low and high storey buildings in the capital. According to Kikaleishvili, number of high blocks is approximately 30 thousand.

Eka Gulua