Tsagareishvili demands Georgian authorities' report on money to repair refugees' houses

Georgi Tsagareishvili, an oppositional MP, has sent today requests to the Office of Public Prosecutor and the Ministry on Refugees' Matters and Accommodation demanding to hold investigation and present information on how the money was spent allocated to repair the housing blocks in Potskho village, where the forced migrants (refugees) evicted from privatized compact accomodation centres in Tbilisi, should move in.

Yesterday, on August 23, Tsagareishvili held a briefing at the parliament, where he declared his intention to launch investigations both at the Ministry on Refugees' Matters and at the Office of Public Prosecutor about what company had been repairing the buildings in Potskho village, Tsalendzhikh District, where 300 refugee families should come and move in.

"These buildings are not repaired, they are in bad condition: neither gas nor electricity was connected. In fact, the builders have just painted the walls of the houses, which remained abandoned for almost half a century; and now they put people there," Georgi Tsagareishvili told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

According to the official statement of the Ministry on Refugees' Matters and Accommodation, 251,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) had lived in Georgia; and after the warfare in August 2008, other 28,000 IDPs arrived additionally from South Ossetia. However, the official website of the Ministry gives a detailed accommodation map of the IDPs, where the total number of them makes 228,142 persons. Of them, 96,038 persons live in places of compact accommodation (buildings of hospitals, hotels, sanatoria and hostels).