A Peek into Georgia’s Marneuli District
Marneuli is the regional capital of Kvemo Kartli, an ethnic Azerbaijani-majority province in eastern Georgia, bordering Armenia and Azerbaijan. The population of Marneuli district is approximately 105,000. Kvemo Kartli was a major industrial area during the Soviet period, but the region saw acute deindustrialization after Georgia gained independence and fell into political and civil strife in the 1990s.
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“In Marneuli, the services are better rather than in the villages. For example, villagers all go to Marneuli for medical services, but when there is something serious, we go to Tbilisi.”
Economically, Marneuli is now agriculture-oriented, but new food processing plants and the 2016 opening of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway points to modest economic revitalization. In the same way, local public infrastructure is widely regarded as insufficient, but there are signs of genuine improvement.
Healthcare facilities expanded significantly in recent years with the development of modern hospitals and clinics, but these are concentrated in Marneuli town, leaving service gaps in some outlying villages.
Some locals reported that new government-sponsored health insurance is a major improvement. Locals have the option of sending their children to either Azerbaijani- or Georgian- language schools, though the latter are frequently cited as better for facilitating national integration and economic opportunities.