It is possible that peasants will not be able to take overwintered cows to pastures in spring  any more. The population of the village said that they had been warned about the fact that the pastures would be the property of the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development. But in the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development  they do not want to speak about this issue. The law about pasture centralization was passed by the parliament in July.

The next step of the state  is the following – the pastures will be passed  to the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development  which will be sold or leased then. The owner of the pastures will make farmers pay money for feeding cattle. This means that by this decision the government will kill two birds with one stone: Kobalia’s  party   will accomplish the plan of privatization, but the budget will have additional revenue in the form of taxes.

Owing to taking away of the pastures, only the mountain population has  expressed a wide protest so far. In Svaneti, they could  not hide their indignation  about that initiation  while talking with us.

“We have already been informed that the pastures must be passed to the state. It turns out that we must pay money for feeding our cattle on our land. The government should not expect from us to pay any money. They’d better not to dare taking our pastures away from us. We wonder which of them is more in need for   grass:  a cow or the Ministry of Economics”. – said the population of Mestia. 

The draft passed by the  legal issues of the parliament about passing pastures to the central power was adopted at the session at the end of July. This  initiation caused a lot of questions among the population – does the power intend to restore communistic regime? or how can the center charge  the pasture located of somewhere, for example in  Chkhorotsku?  

This initiative was explained by Deputy Head of the Committee Lasha Tordia and he said that  that the power  worked  out the whole strategy. In Tordia’s words, the central power will  charge  the pastures better. Zurab Melikishvili- head of Financing- Budget Committee explained the significance of  the words: charge better.   

In his words, there were frequent misunderstandings, when one local self-government did not give an opportunity the other one to use the pastures. It caused a lot of misunderstandings and problems.  “It is just the reason of passing the pastures under proprietorship of the central power.  As a matter of fact, there are disputes owing to  lack of pastures in many regions and not due to the fact that someone can charge  the pastures better. This is the reason of regular confrontation among the villagers.

Though, the argument of Melikishvili is not useful here. If there are few  pastures, there is no point in charging it by either the central power or the local population – neither of the side will be able to  manage reconciling the population. Bezhan Khurtsidze – a member of Regional Policy, Self- governing and Mountainous Committee- says  that the initiative implies to the fact that self-governing bodies have no other ways.   

“I can not imagine how the pastures will be charged by the center. Are we going to turn back in communism era?” - says Bezhan Khurtsidze in surprise.

As an expert David Narmania says, in every country lands and pastures are managed by local self-governing bodies. In his words, it makes no sense for him to pass the pastures to the center.

“I wonder how the authors of this initiative can imagine that the pasture of some village is  charged by the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development.  First, this initiative increases the dependence of self-governing bodies on the center even more. Besides, as we noted above, one can hardly perceive the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development to be in charge of the pastures” - said Narmania.