IDPs Are Being Evicted From the Hotel ‘Kutaisi’

“I am seventy-five-year-old man. I might be an odd person on the earth and I might have already bored people. The way how they treat me and my wife makes me think so. My wife has a cancer and has much to worry about,” said Shota Milorava who resides in the hotel Kutaisi.

The old man got upset at the letter he received several days ago by mail which he had not opened:

“We have not touched the envelope because we know what was written in it. Before sending letter they visited us personally, who cannot understand the pain that is caused by being left homeless and spending nights in the street. They ordered us to leave the place and move to another place. Where should we go? My wife and I have only an umbrella to shelter. My thirty-one-year-old son was killed in Sokhumi. The second son and his wife are disabled people of the second group. The other IDP families live in much more difficulties here. Representatives of the Ltd should have met us and spoken in human way. No, they started to attack us and demanded to leave the place immediately,” said Milorava. His family and other sixty families, who reside in the hotel, received telegrams stating they should leave their flats until March 20.

The Hotel ‘Kutaisi’, where nearly 300 IDPs reside, was sold in 2005 on an auction. The new owner of the hotel is ‘Interinvest, Ltd’. The contract signed between the Georgian Ministry of Economics and the investor states that if the hotel owner starts the reconstruction of the hotel, the owners should provide the IDPs residing in it with alternative accommodations, or compensate them with corresponding money.

Although the owner does not avoid the compensating of the IDPs, the money they are going to pay the families in order to leave the hotel is not enough. “They offer us 4 500USD. In Kutaisi you cannot buy even a cellar with the money. What shall we do? Do they think we like to live in this one room? If we had a chance we should have left the place long time ago. We have been living in the hotel for fourteen years, already. It should also be taken in consideration that every family, which resides in the hotel, lives in extreme poverty. They are people who have endured great tragedy and leaving them in the street would be a final verdict for them. These people will never survive another tragedy” said Milorava.

“When the Ministry of Economics sold the hotel to the investor, the Ministry of Refugees and Accommodation did not involve the process. Neither anybody drew up a contract with IDPs to agree the conditions with them. The negotiations were conducted without IDPs’ involvement. If we take into consideration the increased prices on the space in Kutaisi, the IDPs will not be able to buy anything with the offered money. Thus their reaction is quite natural,” said Zurab Khurtsidze, director of the Sachino, Association against Corruption and for the Protection of Customer’s Rights.

IDPs applied to Khurtsidze’s organization after a representative of the Interinvest had sent a warning letter to them. The notification stated that the sixty-one families should have left the place until March 20.

The negotiations with the IDPs are carried out by Kakha Kukhianidze, the chief of the Informational Bureau. He said he is a plenipotentiary representative of the Ltd. “We started offering the money as soon as the hotel was sold. I involved the process on December 18 2005 and consequently I started to study the documentation on the case. Nowadays we offer 4 500USD to a one-member-family. As for large families, we foresee some additional amount of money for them,” said Kukhianidze.

Besides that Kukhianidze added that he had offered some variants of eviction to the IDPs. 1. An ill-equipped accommodation in a collective center plus compensation; 2. Well-built accommodation in the collective centre, without compensation; 3. A flat in the building under construction in Kutaisi.

The IDPs said that Kukhianidze is lying and they had never received such an offer before. “Khkhianidze has never offered us any alternative space before. They started to force us out of the hotel and did not initiate any dialogue with us either. We cannot stand any more insulting from Kukhianidze. We are about to appeal against him because there is no more way out for us. Kukhianidze also said that forty IDP families are ready to accept the sum. I claim it is a lie and we will prove it soon,” said the IDPs.

Neither Kukhianidze excludes the possibility that the argument would end in the court.  He said if IDPs refuse to leave the place, the owner of the Ltd will apply to the court. They are going to start reconstruction of the hotel late in April and preparation works should start as soon as possible. Kukhianidze is going to meet Kutaisi Mayer to discuss the situation in nearest future. He must receive an official permission to wrap-up and surround the building with fence in the central street.

If we take IDPs intentions into consideration, the period of reconstruction will be more difficult and dramatic than the owner of the Interinvest and his representative could imagine. The IDPs held a warning demonstration last week; they added it was only a start of the future events.

Shorena Kakabadze, Kutaisi