Irganai villagers demand fair compensations for their lands

The residents of the villages whose garden plots fell into the flooding zone of the Irganai hydroelectric power station (HPP) have lost their chances to earn money; and many of them have to search employment for from home, villagers assert. Some Irganai villagers have received 9200 roubles per hundred square meters of their land plots, but this is a very low compensation.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on March 25, the Moscow City Court (MCC) satisfied the complaint against the ruling of the Presnya Court of Moscow on the claim of Dagestani villagers, whose lands had fallen into the flooding area of the Irganai HPP, and obliged local authorities to draft documents, within a reasonable time, on paying compensations to them. On July 18, residents of Irganai and other villages of the Untsukul District asked, in their video appeal to Sergey Melikov, the head of Dagestan, to take the issue of paying compensations under his control.

Shamsudin Shamsudinov, an Irganai villager and one of those who had turned to Mr Melikov with a request to intervene in the payment process, has noted that his garden and those of his fellow villagers were flooded back in 2008; the owners should have been paid appropriate compensations for their lost profits, as well as provided with equivalent land plots. "They failed to allocate land and pay compensations; and what they had paid us was under old tariffs," Mr Shamsudinov told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

He has added that as a result of the construction of the HPP, a total of 215 hectares of gardens belonging to Irganai villagers were flooded; and the owners of 40 hectares (175 persons in total) received no compensations at all; while the owners of the garden plots located on the remaining 175 hectares were paid compensations at the rate of 9200 roubles per hundred square meters of land plots. He finds such compensations as unfair.

The main income of Irganai villagers came from their orchards; but they were flooded during the construction of the Irganai HPP, said Magomed, another villager. During the season, garden plots gave the income that allowed a villager to "survive the whole year safely," Magomed has noted, adding that at the moment, villagers mostly go to republic's cities and outside of Dagestan in search of jobs.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on July 20, 2022 at 07:39 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.