Budgets of local self-governments will fund initiatives of the MIA

Lado Bitchashvili, Shida Kartli 

“Safe city, safe region, safe country” – it is the title of the new project of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which aims to prevent crime, to operatively respond to the committed crime, to identify and combat administrative violations, to manage traffic flow and to ensure collection of valid evidence. The project aims to increase role of high technologies in the work of the police and to improve the crime-prevention activities. 

The project goals and implementation ways were discussed during the consultation meeting, where representatives of the Joint Operation Center of the MIA and leaders of the local municipalities in the regions of Georgia participated. Interim chairman of the Gori City Council Zurab Rosebashvili also attended the meeting. He said the project shall be implemented through cooperation and financial participation of the MIA and local self-governments. Zurab Rosebashvili said, 150 000 GEL is allocated in the Gori city budget for the implementation of the MIA project. The local budget will have to pay 40 000 GEL for the speedometer radars. The Gori City Hall plans to purchase two radars. The rest money will be spent on the so-called “clever cameras.”

“Gori will become safer city. We already allocated places for the cameras and radars; 150 000 GEL is allocated for the purchase of the cameras and radars in the frame of the project,” Rosebashvili said.

City Council member from the Free Democrats Tamar Tedliashvili has remarks about the next year budget. She said while the MIA has more than half billion GEL in the budget, and the 2017 budget for the Gori City Hall is only 16 220 000 GEL, the local budget shall not spend money for the implementation of the MIA’s projects.

“150 000 GEL is a reasonable sum for the Gori budget considering the scope of the next year budget. However, it is not huge sum for the MIA, while it gets more than half billion GEL in the budget. As for the project, it is important to implement it but it is not direct obligation of the local self-government. Many important problems can be resolved with that 150 000 GEL which is direct obligation of the Gori City Hall. For example, increasing funds for the kindergarten vouchers – if we add 5 GEL to the last year 60 GEL, we will need 198 000 GEL for it,” Tedliashvili said.

NGO representatives also like the MIA’s project though they think it is not reasonable to spend local budgets for the purchase of the project equipment.

“It is not reasonable that the local self-governmental body purchased property for the state agency. Although the radars and cameras will be installed in the territory of Gori, they will be operated (managed, used, controlled and stored) by the MIA. Consequently, the MIA shall purchase it and not the local self-governmental body. The expenses of the City Hall will be unreasonable,” Aleksi Merebashvili, lawyer at the Human Rights Center’s Shida Kartli office, said.