The construction of new housing at the locations of houses fully burnt or destroyed during the Georgian aggression was planned to start 1 June 2009. But the process has not been started yet, though there is funding. The demolition and clean up process has just started in Tskhinval. The Chairman of the State Committee for Implementation of Reconstruction Projects Zurab Kabisov told IA RES about the reasons for this delay.
“The damaged houses are being demolished. However, there is no approved consolidated list of houses identified for the priority reconstruction. The work is ongoing – the state and public organizations dealing with reconstruction of private housing had compiled the lists of houses, but these lists do no match each other in the content and the number of houses”, said Kabisov.
The Deputy Minister of Regional Development of the RF, the Chairman of the Inter-Agency commission, Roman Panov had earlier stated that “the reconstruction in South Ossetia depends on the the effective cooperation between the structures engaged in the rehabilitation of housing”. This statement was made at the session on reconstruction of private housing in South Ossetia.
”My request is not to wait for 10-15 days with identification of standard model houses. This is an important element which should be agreed as soon as possible. The approved list of houses which you will send to Moscow will speed up funding”, he noted.
In the meantime, according to Kabiso, “the demolition of houses was not possible before June, since the permission for this was issued on 29 April at the meeting of the Inter-Agency Commission in Moscow.”
It took one month to prepare all assessment papers for the destroyed houses to verify if a house should be rehabilitated or demolished. “The assessment papers were prepared for 3,500 houses on the territory of South Ossetia and they were completed by 24 groups of experts. The initial list of 263 houses for priority reconstruction was reduced to 111 houses in Tskhinval to focus the selection on the most vulnerable families”, said Kabisov.
This is not the final list, since the minimum number will be 250 houses. This number includes the damaged houses in rural areas of the Republic.
Robert Guliev: “All the information needed for staring up the reconstruction process in Tskhinval is provided promptly” 18.06.2009 - 10:50
The Tskhinval Mayor’s Office is participating in the rehabilitation processes only in the sphere of provision of information. The Mayor of Tskhinval Robert Guliev told this to the IA RES reporter.
The Chairman of the State Committee for Implementation of Reconstruction Projects Zurab Kabisov, the Head of Tskhinval City Administration Robert Guliev, and First Deputy Chairman of the Government, Health and Social Welfare Minister Nugzar Gabaraev are dealing with the issues related to rehabilitation of private housing damaged during the August aggression.
It is worth reminding that the mechanism for distribution of funds for reconstruction of housing has been elaborated, but the process itself has not been launched. The Head of City Administration Rober Guliev commented on the situation with delayed reconstruction of destroyed private housing.
”As a part to the executive branch of power in the Republic of South Ossetia, the city administration is interested in the housing rehabilitation process. But there is also a sole customer, the State Committee for Implementation of Reconstruction Projects which is directly cooperating with the Inter-Agency Commission. The Mayor’s Office of Tskhinval is contributing to the reconstruction process only through providing information. And the information needed to start up the reconstruction is provided promptly. The City Administration is dealing only with the questions which are envisaged in 2009 Plan. I cannot comment on the reasons for delays since it is the State Committee for Implementation of Reconstruction Projects which is fully responsible for this”, noted Guliev.
It is worth reminding that both the houses burnt in August and those damaged during the Georgian – Ossetian conflict in 1989-1992 are to be demolished. The latter were not included into the priority list for reconstruction.