The President of Georgia addressed the residents of Mtskheta

1/10/2012

Greetings,

The Mtskheta Medical Center is the most beautiful among the hospitals opened within the last few months.

I recalled one tragic story while on the way here: my friend was in a car accident about ten years ago not too far away from here. He was losing a lot of blood, but the road policeman did not put him in his car because he did not want it to have blood stains. With a lot of trouble they stopped another car and brought him to the Mtskheta Hospital, where there were no medical conditions at all. This is the kind of police and healthcare we had.

Of course that’s why this is such a big change.

They often say that the progress was going to happen anyway.

Name at least one country in the post soviet space with more oil and gas than us, or one of the countries of Eastern Europe that is a member of the EU, where such a serious advancements of the healthcare system took place in this specific period of time.

There is only one such country and it is called Georgia.

I heard many times from politicians and ordinary citizens: hospitals have been built, but who they are affordable to?

My dears trust me, these hospitals are for you – foreigners won’t come here to get medical treatment.

Statistically, a large part of the Georgian population is already insured. The low cost insurance program must expand even more. The insurance companies and every one of us must work so that these hospitals are affordable to anyone.

I visit every place personally, talk to the people and find out about their problems. For example, I found out that the second school of Mukhrani has not been renovated since my visit. I go to these meetings so that I can find out about issues from the people first hand.

We have a large program of school rehabilitation and these schools are really being rehabilitated.

Some people do not like the current development – some don’t like the painted facades of the buildings, some don’t like various renovating methods. There are also people, who do not like ceremonial events. For example, they don’t like the concerts that are being held or the performers who arrive in Georgia.

I would like to ask a question: during the period when I became President, did we have over one hundred thousand tourists arriving? The year before last we had 2 million tourists and last year up to 3 million.

Did our natural environment become better? Or did the climate change for better? The natural environment is the same it was in the past.

Why did all of this happen? Because we have renovated and rehabilitated everything, we are holding ceremonial events on holidays and not only in specific places, but all around.

This is exactly the implementation of the idea of equality, this is progress.

I don’t know but maybe you can name a country in the world where tourism is developing so rapidly as in Georgia?

The Mtskheta rehabilitation process is going on now but for the most part everything is being rebuilt from a scratch. This is exactly how it happened in Signagi – we practically rebuilt the town from a scratch. There is a lot to be built in Mestia and a lot of new things are being built there.

There are not many things to be restored in our country. We are completely rebuilding our country. Everything is being created from a scratch and it will be better this way.

As the ancient Georgian wisdom tells us: “No matter who says what, the mill stone keeps rovolving”

Let them talk and let us do business.