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One Week Turnaround for Replies

June 19, 2008

One hour at the chancellery of the City Hall

Nona Suvariani, Tbilisi

“I appealed to the City Hall regarding the registration of land on January 18 2008. I provided all documents that they requested and told me to come back within a month. I visited the City Hall on February 18 and I was told to come again in a month. On March 18 they told me this time to come back in two weeks. Next time the term was one month and half. Since that time I visit them every second day. I complained with one of the employees of the City Hall about the situation and who replied that I had to wait for yet another three months.”
 
Noise, irritated faces, annoying waiting process… the situation is very familiar for everybody who ever visited the City Hall at least once in their life. It is enough to spend 15 minutes in the chancellery on the ground floor of the City Hall where you will become part of the stressful situation there (participant of the general tension).

Tbilisi City Hall has changed its building in the last several months. The city authority moved it from a small building in Liberty Square to a huge modern-building with glass façade in Saakadze Square. The City Hall has also changed interior. In addition to the location, screens and cameras are installed in a large hall; new wooden furniture can be found there too. You will not have to take a life turn in a queue; the machine in the hall will give you a tablet with your number. The same information is provided by the screens on the walls. The bulletin board and each employee of the chancellery will explain to you who you should meet to answer your question. In short, there is “bureaucratic paradise” here, especially if there were not some problems that needed to be resolved.

The entrance of the City Hall looks like a Pantomime Theatre – because the movement and expression of people working there are so impressive. A small group of people are staring at the screen as if the time spent will somehow speed up their turn to receive services.

We decided to play by the rules and approached the machine to get our ticket to take our turn. Our number was 853 with a note that “55 persons are already waiting ahead of you”. For short time when we were checking the ticket a little boy made the machine release the tickets at least three times. He did not stop despite being rebuked. Evidently, he stopped only after the guards arrived to shoe him away. Nonetheless, such incidents are all part of the very symbolic process of waiting to take your turn.

While our turn approached we decided to go round the hall and find a proper place to listen to some interesting dialogues. But every place is interesting for that purpose. We finally stopped near the telephones. Actually, telephones are always busy in the chancellery. Until we reached the destination, we talked with Mrs. Dali who had come there for the second time. She said that one of the officials at the City Hall had not given her a right answer and now she wanted to find out the actual truth.

“I have come here for the second time. I think only nasty people should come here, those who can argue and shout. I heard on TV that they are building houses for the families that fall below the official poverty level. I wanted to inquire about that information. Initially I visited the district administration then came here but could not sort out anything.
Another reason for my visit is medical policy granted to my husband. The problem is that we do not know which doctor we should apply to in obtaining a consultation. There is no address indicated anywhere. The number written on the policy does not exist at all. Here I was given another number but it also was not the right one.”

All numbers of City Hall service departments are on the wall next to telephones. We noticed another strange thing. The printed numbers are hard to read. We would not have paid attention to the fact, if we had not noticed that the papers with phone numbers on it had such shortcomings

     

.When we examined the list of phone numbers, we heard the speech of a woman standing nearby; and she was crying and urging us to hurry up.

The first phrase she told us was: “I know they will not do anything; they just make promises,” we were surprised because she was applying to employees with “dear” and “darling.”

We found out that the woman has been visiting the City Hall for sixteen months already. “My husband died and I want to register my own house. The same situation is about the second application; my aunt wants to register the house following the death of her husband.”

Initially she visited the Public Registry; then to the district administration and finally she was sent to the City Hall; the woman claimed that nobody answers the phone calls at City Hall.

 “They have been torturing me so long time. I cannot stand it anymore; they have not given me any answer for more than one year, and now they state that the reply will be sent to my house. I wanted to meet Gigi Ugulava, Tbilisi Mayor, but nobody allows me to meet with him; they do not even release permits to meet other officials of the City Hall. This place is a kind of fortress, and just two weeks ago an employee advised me to write a suit and her reply exceeded any kind expected response that I could have hoped for.

I am astonished. These people should serve people but nobody does his/her job here. Why do they work here in the first place?”

Although the woman has been visiting the City Hall for sixteen months already, nobody knows exactly which service department is discussing her case if any…according to the inner phone number she was using we found out that it was the Commission for the Registration of Plots within the Legal Department. Later we needed to get in contact with employees of the commission.

     

One hour had passed and our figure from the ticket did not appear at all. We decided to find out what was going on and went towards the place where most people were standing in spite of the fact that the information board did not work. We showed our ticket to the guard and stated we wanted to find out the issues about land registration. He said we were in a right place. Being extremely surprised we took our place in an ordinary “Georgian queue” with a ticket in the hand. Actually, Georgian queues are never followed in our country. Nobody could explain why the screen was not working. While we were standing in the queue we received very interesting information. “The man is crazy, and we learned that yesterday, a woman was crying; and nobody would accept her documents.”

The issue we wanted to find out was about the legalization of the plot. One of the topics during the pre-election campaign for the Georgian President was to register lands and properties. As soon as people learned about it, they decided to legalize their properties and applied to the City Hall and submitted all necessary documents…
Here is the story of one of the ladies who preferred to be anonymous to avoid further complications.

“I appealed to the City Hall regarding the legalization of the land on January 18 2008. I provided all documents they requested and told me to come back within a month. I visited the City Hall on February 18 and I was told to come in a month again. On March 18 they told me to come again in two weeks. Next time the term to show up was but one month and a half. Since that time I visit them every second day. I complained with one of the employees of the City Hall about the situation who replied that I had to wait for three more months.”

The man standing nearby who had also been visiting the City Hall for a long time explained to us.

     

“The City hall does not have enough specialists to discuss the applications of many people. Consequently, they send the documents to the houses three months later, which is intended to prolong the term by a period of an additional three months. They argue with people about the most unimportant of details, which is intended to prolong the process that much further.”

Finally, we found out that we were standing in the queue without purpose, and they had to call at the Commission for the registration of plots within the legal department. We inquired whether they had discussed the letter we had submitted three months ago, and they replied: “We will send replies to everybody by the end of the next week.”

 


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