Tbilisi, April 23, 2013 – We would like to respond to the statement made by the Tbilisi City Hall on April 18 following our statement published earlier this month in which we wrote about the responsibility of the heads of the Municipal Departments for Ecology and Greening and Procurement.

In our initial statement, we emphasized three main problems:

• Unsatisfactory ecological conditions in Tbilisi;
• Alarming condition of the City’s green areas;
• Problems related to municipal procurements in the area of greening that create a high risk of misuse of budgetary funds and corruption.

We would like to express our gratitude to the City government for responding to our statement. However, regrettably, the City Hall statement does not contain satisfactory answers regarding the above issues. Moreover, the City Hall’s response raises additional questions about the activities of the municipal Department of Ecology and Greening. In particular, it is clear from the statement that the management of the Ecology and Greening Department, unfortunately, does not seem to understand the essence of the serious problems facing the city at present.

Due to the above, we would like to reiterate that it would be appropriate if the City Hall and the City Council examined the issue of official responsibility of the heads of relevant municipal departments. Judging by the current situation, as well as the established practices of recent years, we believe that the present leadership of the Ecology and Greening Department is not capable of resolving the problems facing the City, while some of their activities are actually detrimental to the City environment. Subsequently, we do not believe that it would be appropriate, at this stage, to discuss the above issues separately with the present management of the Department. It was exactly for this reason that we refused to meet the Department heads on 17 April. It should also be noted that, for reasons unknown to us, Green Alternative was not invited to the meeting.

At the same time, we express our readiness to meet with the City Hall and the City Council leadership and to explain our position on these issues in greater detail. Given the importance of the problem, we consider it pertinent to have the Ministry of Environment Protection and the Parliamentary Committee on Environmental Protection and Natural Resources s also involved in the process.