GEORGIA: DESPAIR OF LANDSLIDE VILLAGERS
By Tedo Jorbenadze in Khulo and Olesya Vartanian in Ninotsminda
Institute for War and Peace Reporting, UK
May 4 2006
The government is accused of failing the victims of environmental
disaster.
Thousands of Georgians are being displaced by landslides from the
Black Sea region of Ajaria, only to be resettled in an area where
the locals greet them with open hostility.
Landslides are destroying houses, pastures and farming land in three
mountainous districts – Khulo, Keda and Shuakhevi – in Ajaria, the
autonomous republic in south-western Georgia.
Close to 5,000 families, around 30,000 people in all, are expecting
resettlement any day now under a new government programme. However,
they are worried by the sight of neighbours who were resettled and
have now returned home.
Residents from the village of Jalabashvilebi, which has all but
disappeared under huge landslides, say they were offered a move to
Tsalka in southern Georgia, but when they arrived with their children
and belongings, there were no houses or land plots for them there.
“We were driven around like cattle,” said one villager who did not
want to give his name. “How long could our new neighbours have fed
us? We finally understood that no one would take care of us. We
borrowed some money and came back.”
Landslides first began causing problems in Ajaria, a mountainous but
densely populated region of Georgia, in the Eighties. Since then,
97 villages have been affected, with 1,500 houses collapsing and
roads and fields becoming unusable. Around 100 people have died and
more than 5,000 families have been relocated.
“Active logging over a number of years has brought the region to
the current environmental crisis,” explained Tariel Tuskia, head of
Ajaria’s geology department, saying the land was simply overpopulated.
“Not a single inch of land remains uncultivated,” he said. “People cut
wood in order to earn a living and it is impossible to blame them for
this. Preventive measures against landslides are so costly that it is
better to spend the money on buying houses for people somewhere else.
“In short, the only way out is to lighten the demographic load on
the region.”
According to Georgia’s ministry for housing and refugees, last year
252 houses were bought for people resettled from Ajaria to other parts
of the country. However the houses still belong to the government,
not the migrants.
In March, Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili participated in
a ceremony to mark the resettlement of ten families from the Khulo
district to the Akhmeta region of north-east Georgia. He made his
official helicopter available to transport the group, and was filmed
holding two-year-old Anri Ghorjomelidze in his arms.
Two months on, the settlers – Anri’s father among them – are still
asking for help to get their belongings transported to their new
places of residence.
“The former owner of this house left nothing for us,” said Jambul
Ghorjomelidze. “Even little Anri sleeps on the floor. We have not
been given land, either, and you cannot even rent it, as all of it
has already been distributed. We now have to go round our neighbours
and persuade them to allow us to cultivate their land and share
the harvest.”
Most of the migrants have been settled in areas with predominantly
Armenian or Greek populations, causing resentment in the host
communities.
“Everyone understands this policy here,” said Sevak Yeranosyan, an
Armenian resident of Ninotsminda district in the southern region of
Javakheti. “They [the Ajarians] should without fail be resettled to
Armenian villages so that there will be a larger Georgian population
here. Their programme is to populate our region with Georgians and
Ajarians.”
Yeranosyan voiced locals suspicions about the incomers, “These people
come here unexpectedly. We residents know nothing about them. We
don’t know who they are or where they come from. Some people here even
believe that most of the new settlers are convicted criminals who get
sent here after doing a deal where they are told, ‘You go and settle
among Armenians and we will stop legal proceedings against you.'”
In March, fights broke out between local Armenians and incomers in
Tsalka. One person died and the local government offices were badly
damaged.
As a result of all these problems, many families have gone back
to Ajaria and are now living either with relatives or in their
half-ruined homes.
Kakha Guchmanidze, head of the Ajarian department for refugees and
housing, admitted to IWPR that the resettlement programme had gone
badly.
“Yes, there was no preliminary work for the programme. No land plots
were prepared for the settlers. No one calculated what each family
would need to set up its own farms and adapt normally to the new
situation,” he said.
Zaza Imedashvili, a high-ranking official in the ministry of housing
and refugees in Tbilisi, admitted that the resettlement programme is
still at a very early stage, and that only now is a database being
created to show who has been resettled to date.
This year, the ministry’s budget for purchasing houses for families
that have suffered from environmental disasters is only 1,227,000 lari
(around 500,000 US dollars). Imedashvili said this was meant to cover
victims of various disasters across Georgia.
“We still think Ajarians can be resettled in high mountain districts,
such as Tsalka, Tetritsqaro, and Akhalkalaki,” said Imedashvili.
“Houses are a lot cheaper there and it is possible to keep within
our price limits – 5,000 lari.”
Vepkhia Beridze and his young wife, who left their destroyed house
for the village of Koreti in Tsalka district, are not impressed by
these arguments. “The floor in one of the rooms of this new house of
ours collapsed on the very first day, and the wall cracked later,”
he said. “We will soon have a child but neither doors not windows
are good for anything in our house.”
Settlers also complain that they are given a one-off sum of just 50
lari (27.50 dollars) per family to help with the relocation.
However, allocation of land is the biggest problem in a region where
the locals already complain of not having enough land for themselves.
Ninotsminda journalist Levon Vartanian predicted, “There will be big
problems, as all the land plots have already been occupied and their
owners will not give up anything to anyone so easily.”
“This year, we will purchase houses with land plots for settlers,”
said Imedashvili. “We will probably buy around one hectare. It is not
much but the issue is still being considered. Ultimately, there will
probably be two or three hectares for each family.”
“If this problem is not solved, I agree that it is not worthwhile
for these people to move.”
Aslan Chachanidze, a lawyer in the Ajarian capital Batumi, said the
law was too vague and that the people affected did not have adequate
welfare provision.
Experts are worrying that Ajaria’s environmental problems are getting
worse. Apart from the mountain landslides, the Black Sea coastline has
advanced by 300 metres in the village of Adlia, destroying a dozen
houses. Nearby Batumi airport is under threat too, and in stormy
weather waves reach its runway, as well as a railway line near the
town of Kobuleti.
Geologist Tariel Tuskia also predicts more problems in the mountains.
“Disasters will become more frequent… when the snow starts melting,”
he said. “In fact, the whole of mountainous Ajaria is already in the
danger zone.”
Tedo Jorbenadze is a reporter for Batumelebi newspaper, in Ajaria.
Olesya Vartanian is a reporter for the IWPR-supported Southern Gates
newspaper in Samtskhe-Javakheti.