Residential Houses of Chakvi Population Will Soon Be Dismantled

According to the resolution of the Kobuleti Municipality, 173 residential houses in the area of the small town of Chakvi will be deconstructed in the nearest future. Those people who are threatened to remain homeless applied to the Human Rights Center (HRIDC) for help. The number of the people reached 1000.

The owners of the residential houses do not have documents on their properties. Most part of the families has many children and they are from mountainous districts in Adjara Region. According to the resolution of that-time Autonomous Republic they were resettled from the mountain.

“I arrived in Gonio Agricultural Farm to work from Shuakhevi District in 1985. I settled in the small town of Chakvi in 1989. I was legally registered in the village council and my wife and I started to work on the collective farm. The land where my house is located on was not registered on the collective farm. I applied to the Chakvi administration and they gave me the land. Before I built the house, there was some useless shed in the area that burnt down and then we built the house. They demanded money to register the house on me; I could not pay money for registration. Now I have nowhere to go. This house is registered in my ID too,” said Arsen Dumbadze who added that nobody had warned him about the deconstruction.

The family of Beridzes came from the Khulo District in mountainous Adjara and settled in Chakvi. Their house was also built according to the official project. “My family has many children. We left the Khulo district because natural disaster often damaged us. That time authority of the Adjara Region had information about our resettlement. We can produce the document on our resettlement from Khulo District which also envisaged the distribution of the plots to us. We could not live in open air. We built up the house but could not register it. During previous years they demanded money from us for registration and we could not afford it. But now they are going to destroy our houses. We do not have to go anywhere like many families in the area. If they deconstruct our houses, we will have only one way out-we will start a hunger-strike in front of the Administration building of Adjara Autonomous Republic,” said Marina Beridze and neighbors also agree with her.

Tengiz Zoidze, Kobuleti Municipality Governor, confirms the information about the deconstruction of the houses in his conversation with the Human Rights Center. He said the land where residential houses are located belongs to the Municipality and the deconstruction is legal.

Most part of local inhabitants does not have to go anywhere. The population does not agree with the decision of the Municipality and is about to start hunger-strike in front of the building of Adjara Government if their houses are deconstructed.

“Even those families, who have documents issued by the Adjara Autonomous Republic on their settlement in Chakvi, will remain homeless. These families came from mountainous Adjara Region. Several applicants say that they had purchased the land from physical persons but they cannot produce registration documents. According to our information, the authority inserted the land on the deconstruction list because the empty land will be privatized and then sold out. If the population is damaged and remained homeless, similar decision is illegal,” said representatives of the Human Rights Center’s Batumi Office.

Gela Mtivlishvili, Batumi