Georgia's Neglected Border Areas

Friday, 20 August, 2010

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Tea Topuria

Villages located on Georgia’s borders are suffering a population exodus, and experts say the government is not doing enough to stem the flow by reviving economic life in these areas.

Take Guguti, for example, a village in the Dmanisi district on Georgia’s southern border with Armenia. Many of the houses there are now inhabited only in summer, or lie empty all the time.

Givi Niniashvili, head of the village administration, explained why local farmers are unable to make a decent living.

“We can grow grain, but we don’t plant it because we don’t have the machinery. It’s impossible to gather in the whole harvest using the one Chinese lightweight tractor we have,” he said. “Last year there was a good fruit crop but we couldn’t cope with it. For us, gathering in the harvest is one of the most serious problems. That’s why many families leave their homes and move away. If there’s nothing to support the population, everyone leaves.”

Guguti’s problems are shared by similar villages in other border areas which suffer from a lack of infrastructure and investment.

Gela Mtvivlishvili of the Kakheti Information Centre says around 20 per cent of residents of such villages have moved away.

“Virtually no companies are operating. Despite their strategic significance of border villages, the authorities are not paying the right amount of attention to them,” he said. “The people are in urgent need of social assistance, and migration increases with every year.”

Official statistics do not reflect the exodus from border areas, but the authorities admit that many of the people registered as residents are actually living elsewhere.

“In the census, they record how many people are registered in each household, but in fact those people may live somewhere else entirely, and in reality, the house will be standing empty,” said Raphiel Gelantia, an expert with the parliamentary committee for regional policy.

Gelantia said the government was prioritising road-building and the restoration of the water supply in order to reverse the flow of migrants.

“The main thing is for roads to be provided everywhere. That will means investors will come, and the population will have more opportunities,” he said.

Other analysts say this investment does not seem to be having much effect yet, since emigration from border villages is still rising. After the brief 2008 war with Russia, the Gori area north of the capital Tbilisi began to suffer the economic isolation typical of border regions, as it found itself on the de facto frontier with South Ossetia, recognised as independent by Moscow.

Before the conflict, local farmers were able to sell apples to Ossetians, who then exported them to Russia. Now they earn a fraction of their former income by selling their apples to a local processing plant.

Russia’s ban on importing Georgian food products has caused problems for fruit-growers all over the country, affecting sales of grapes and citrus fruit as well as apple. Farmers say government assistance schemes for the industry have proved inadequate, while the domestic market cannot absorb all they grow.

The government also runs special programmes to support life in mountainous areas, where migration levels are also high.

But despite financial assistance, people continue to leave the mountains. Residents of the Kazbegi district on the main route to Russia found their trading links cut in 2006 when the border was closed. As they turned to growing produce in greenhouses as an alternative income, they were unable to keep them heated despite subsidised gas laid on by the Georgian government. Many have since left in search of a better life in the lowlands.

Ramaz Sakvarelidze, a political analyst and lecturer at Tbilisi State University, says that as it becomes easier for people to choose where they want to live, they will only stay put in remote areas if these undergo intensive development so that living standards become comparable to other parts of the country.

“Many countries have problems in border areas, not just Georgia. All countries want their borders to be secured not just by frontier guards, but by a local population as well,” he said. “Out-migration levels have increased because of economic problems and because moving about is easier.

“If we are to retain people in these areas, we would either need to restrict their movements – and that would be unacceptable – or else create good economic conditions such as exist in other places. That implies more government programmes for residents of border villages. They need to have more attention paid to them, and to be given an incentive to remain living where they are.”

Tea Topuria is a freelance journalist in Georgia.