As Infotag has already reported, on Thursday morning a crowd of strongly agitated, middle-aged men and some women gathered in front of the City Hall, loudly demanding to link their recently built multistory apartment house to utility sources - water, central heating, electricity, gas, garbage removal, etc.
Seeing that their presence did not touch city fathers in any particular way, the infuriated men broke into the City Hall, stating they would not let the Council meeting to start if the councilors do not care to listen to them.
Leader of the Movement of Refugees from Transnistria, Anatol Bizgu, claimed "we are tired of waiting until the city authorities fulfill what they have themselves promised to us. Our families are exhausted staying homeless for over 15 years".
He demanded that the Council hold an extraordinary meeting with participation of the refugees and the mass media and explain why the Municipality would not issue official ownership certificates to the apartment owners.
However, Council Chairman Mihai Ghimpu [who is Chisinau Mayor Dorin Chirtoaca's uncle] demanded that the protesters stop telling him what he must do. Ghimpu believes the refugees are simply used by some forces in political goals because, he said, had they really wished to solve their housing, not someone's political problems, they would be acting in a quieter and a more civilized manner - writing applications, asking audiences, standing in queues, and the like.
Ghimpu offered the picketers to vacate the assembly hall and to move over into another room, where the problems of each concrete refugee family could be considered with relevant executives. The protesters refused to. They claimed they had no more force to combat corruption and lawlessness at every step, and demanded dismissal of Mayor Dorin Chirtoaca [aged 29] for his inefficiency.
The Chisinau Municipal Council meeting was put off until February 5.
On Friday morning, Ion Bizgu contacted your Infotag correspondent saying that the Chisinau Primaria [city government] had promised to issue apartment certificates to the refugee families in the nearest days.
In his words, Chisinau Mayor Dorin Chirtoaca promised to him that on February 5 the Council will consider - in the presence of refugees' representatives - issuing such certificates to 80 families.
The refugees concerned are the families of former Transnistrian region residents - officers who were employed by Moldovan police, security and military structures that used to be deployed in Transnistrian populated areas before and during the 1992 armed conflict there.
After the war, Chisinau and Tiraspol signed an armistice agreement, by which those officers and their families were evacuated to the right Dniester bank to save them from the local population's revenge, and were promised that housing would be provided to them by the Moldovan State instead of the homes they lost in Transnistria.
By now, only one of the promised two apartment houses has been built. However, to make it fully operational and officially valid, some paper work has to be done, without which the city authorities may not issue certificates to lodgers or connect the building to utility networks. But the exhausted families moved into their empty apartments without waiting for the documents or elementary conveniences.
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