Official: 40,000 IDPs can Return Home

Around 40,000 people can return to their homes in the areas adjacent to breakaway South Ossetia following the Russian withdrawal, a senior Georgian official in charge of issues related with internally displaced persons, said on October 9.

MP Koba Subeliani from the ruling party, who is a former state minister for refugees and accommodation, said “only a few percent of houses are totally destroyed.”

“There are many houses that need repair and we will do that; it is not a very difficult task,” he told Tbilisi-based radio station Ucnobi FM  by phone from the region.

“The damage [to houses] is less than we expected; we expected much more damage,” MP Subeliani added.

He also said that Georgian police were now responsible for security in the area, adding that it was now safe to return.

Meanwhile, the Ministry for Refugees and Accommodation released a list of 52 villages where it said it was possible to return at this stage. It also said that the Tbilisi municipality had provided buses to ferry displaced persons to those villages.

People forced to flee Georgian villages inside the breakaway region will be provided with houses, which are currently under construction mainly in the Shida Kartli region sometime in December, MP Subeliani said.

The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said last month that about 22,000 internally displaced people from the Georgian villages inside South Ossetia and about 1,000 people who fled from upper Kodori Gorge in breakaway Abkhazia would be unable to return to their homes in “the foreseeable future.”

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