Guria. The Union of Democratic Development of Georgia and the Mediators’ Association of Guria have interviewed the population of Ozurgeti town in November-December 2013, aimed at examining the activities of the water supplying organization in Ozurgeti – "United Water Supply Company of Georgia” LLC, assessing the level of satisfaction of the Ozurgeti water users with its services, and comparing the fulfillment of obligations undertaken by this company with the factually existing situation.

According to the official data of the Water Supply Company, total of 4.788 subscribers are registered in the Ozurgeti Service Center. Out of these, 634 customers were interviewed (i.e. 13.2% of total number of subscribers), who receive water from the "United Water Supply Company”. In view of specifics of the population poll and for the purposes of a comparative analysis, separate interviews were conducted with customers living in multi-apartment buildings and those residing in private houses. Such differentiation was triggered by a variety of services provided to them in the water supply sector.Interviewing has identified the most essential and key problems of the Ozurgeti population in the water supply sector: 1) subscribers are unaware of the water supply time-table, which is mostly undetermined; 2) pressuring the water supplied to subscribes is problematic, especially in multi-storey residential houses (Ozurgeti-based subscribers intensely use special pressure empowering pumps, which obviously increases their monthly utility fees); 3) the issue of water quality is very acute, which, in the opinion of majority of the interviewed subscribers is not safe for health; 4) fee for the utilized water is not adequate and proportionate to the service offered by the Water Supply Company to its subscribers; 5) there is no practice of contractual regulation of relations between the supplier of drinking water and the customers, which would write out the rights and obligations of each party ...The water customer opinion poll was carried out by the "East-West Management Institute” (EWMI) under the aegis of the G-PAC Program, funded as part of the project "Union for Protecting the Water Customer Rights”, implemented by the Union of Democratic Development of Georgia together with the "Mediators’ Association of Guria”. Implementation of this program became possible by assistance of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).