2 May 2024

...The East–West highway links the nation’s eastern regions to its western territories, as well as to the Black Sea coast. Integral to the E60 European Transit Road, the highway serves as a crucial link for transit between Europe and Asia and provides an opportunity for enhanced trade and investment...Three international donors – the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the World Bank (WB), and the European Investment Bank (EIB) – took over financing, with construction passed on to several Chinese companies...

...[T]he construction project, once heralded as a symbol of progress and splendour, has been marred by controversies. And public perception has shifted dramatically, as frequent landslides, accompanying road closures, and the collapse of newly built structures (further to the west, but part of the highway) have led people to regard the praised linear infrastructure as a potential danger to their safety and well-being. ‘It’s a scary sight when you’re in the car with the whole family and your child. It affected me emotionally’, Keti Labadze, a commuter who witnessed the landslide on the Rikoti Road last December, told reporters...

Experts have observed that the landslides have intensified since construction works on the Rikoti Pass began, disturbing the delicate balance of the vulnerable and unstable slopes in the Rikoti Pass. Critics have also questioned the quality of the environmental impact assessments, particularly why safer and more cost-effective alternative routes, which would have bypassed the landslide-prone areas by widening the old existing road, were not selected. 

Questions have also swarmed around the role of poor-quality construction practices employed by the constellation of Chinese state-owned firms in the overall environmental and social impact of the project and how the winning contracts were awarded to companies with murky backgrounds and histories of serious misconduct and corrupt practices...

In the village that lies at the intersection of two project construction segments – Chumateleti–Khevi and Khevi–Ubisa – landslides have slowly crept towards residential areas, posing physical risks to vulnerably located family homes. The World Bank’s Implementation Status and Results Report (ISRR), published in September 2023, revealed that 23 new complaints from the Chumateleti–Khevi section, the majority concerning the landslides that hit the region in April and May 2023, including three cases requesting physical resettlement, were lodged with the project’s grievance mechanism. By February 2024, at least one affected family that we spoke to was still waiting on a decision about their relocation...

...As the construction company could not dump all of the waste rock generated due to tunnel drilling and landslides into the riverbed and floodplain, they took it to a ravine that overlooks the highway, the village itself, and the river Rikotula. This ill-thought-out and botched arrangement of the waste-rock dump site in the ravine now threatens the settlement and its public school...

Despite the community’s concerns regarding environmental damage and changes resulting from the highway construction, local residents have struggled to be heard. Although the Roads Department of the Ministry of Infrastructure, the project promoter, claims to have conducted 78 individual and group meetings along the 50-kilometre route in 2023, members of the Khevi community assert that communication with the department primarily occurs at their initiation and has yielded few, if any, improvements.