Georgia to provide accommodation for police officers, increase benefits for vulnerable children
‘Police town’ to be built in Georgia
Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili announced today at a government meeting that a ‘police town’ with a thousand apartments will be built on Anna Politkovskaya Street in Tbilisi. Also, according to the head of government, assistance to socially vulnerable children will increase from 100 to 150 lari (from 33 to 50 dollars).
“This is my great wish and together we decided that we will build a city for 1б000 policemen of our police heroes, we will start this project this year, we have already begun preparatory work and the place has been chosen – there used to be a special police base in this place. We will move the base to another place, and in this place a residential complex will be built, similar to the one we built for our soldiers. The conditions will be the same as they were for the army, that is, they will pay about $ 100 per 1 square meter, the rest will be covered by the state. We think that this will be a permanent project, it should not be one-time, it should become an additional motivation for our police officers”б Garibashvili said.
Speaking about social assistance, Garibashvili stressed that “in this regard, the total budget will amount to 341,000 lari (about $112,000)”.
“In addition, this assistance will continue next year, and we have decided to continue it every year. This concerns more than 215,000 children”, said Irakli Garibashvili.
According to the National Statistical Office of Georgia, 13.7% of the total population of Georgia receives social benefits, which means that every 7th person lives below the poverty line. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the number of such people has increased by 16% and now more than half a million people receive benefits – 510,343.
The number of people registered in the database has also increased since the start of the pandemic. These are people who turned to the state for social assistance.
On February 14 of this year, Prime Minister Garibashvili announced a program for the employment of socially vulnerable segments of the population and the employment of 200,000 people from March 1. According to Garibashvili, this will have a double effect – on the one hand, it will increase the income of the unemployed who receive social benefits, and at the same time, it will help create a new infrastructure or improve the existing one.
According to him, this program will be useful for able-bodied people who receive social benefits from the age of 18 to retirement age, who do not have the status of a disabled person or who do not have serious health problems.
