MUNICIPAL OFFICIALS CONTINUE RIPPING OFF TBILISI’S UNIQUE REMAINING GREEN AREAS… We thought it was over—the land-grabbing deals between private companies and officials working outside the law. Today another development company is yet again planning to resume construction of 7 storey hotel in the central and largest park (Vake Park) of Tbilisi. For more than a year activists from a grass roots movement, called Guerilla Gardening Tbilisi, have been physically blocking the construction by setting up a camp and manning the roadblocks in the park. However, the Municipal government keeps abusing its power and greenlighting the project. Our legal action against the City Hall is taking a long time and is stalled, due to overloaded court system disorganized City administration. They refuse to block the destruction of Vake Park at least until a verdict can be issued. Indeed a building permit was issued by the Mayor on an “exceptional basis”, and in violation of current legislation. Vake Park was founded in 1945 and covered 200 hectares. Owing to corruption, in the last 60 years it has shrunk to ony 19 hectares—that’s less than 10% of its original size! The rest of this unique Recreational Zone is still up for grabs under the current City management. The developers are planning to resume construction work this week! If you consider Tbilisi your home town, or you dont like the idea of seeing parts of Tbilisi and its green areas destroyed, feel free to join our protest. If you can, bring a flag representing your country to show international support for this cause. To learn about the timing of the protest you can subscribe to our Emergency Only notifications by texting follow partizanebi to the number 40404. You do not need a smartphone or a twitter account for this to work. You can find more information on the Facebook page created by Guerilla Gardeners: პარტიზანული მებაღეობა თბილისში Guerrilla gardening Tbilisi
Posted on: Thu, 15 Jan 2015 11:24:11 +0000