Public Servants – Privileged Caste

There are 212 people employed in the Ozurgeti municipality government, plus 5 more officials hired by the labor agreement. Every month, 83000 lari are spent from the local budget for taking care of these people. This amounts to 996000 lari in 12 months.

The governor of Ozurgeti municipality Giorgi Takidze states that no staff optimization is planned: “We are only planning the structural changes that we will present to the City Council (Sakrebulo) for affirmation. At this phase, no staff optimization will take place, only attestation.’’

As the assistant of the head of Ozurgeti municipality Sakrebulo, Avtandil Meqvabishvili states, the local government of Ozurgeti Municipality has many functions and authorities established by the law, implementing of which need well-prepared, well-educated and qualified staff.

“Consequently, the above mentioned staff should be granted relevant salaries that is completely lawful,” – considers Meqvabishvili.

The regional head of the Ozurgeti “National Forum,” Shota Gogiberidze, states that this obscure number of people working in the local government serves only one purpose – creating certain “labor exchange” and in this way establishing governmental resource for the elections.

According to him, the politics conducted by this government does not create any basis for really employing people.

“Personally I doubt the qualification of people employed here. I’ve heard from many of them: I don’t know how to use time from 10a.m till 18p.m. The essence of local government (I’m purposely not saying the word self-government, as such word doesn’t exist) doesn’t mean making or implementing local decisions in maximally centralized government. That’s why the society can’t understand such a number of people employed in the local government structures. In the light of universal economic distress, the question is asked – how lawful is it to finance the material welfare and luxuries of the public servants by the expenses of the state budget contributed by the region population? I mean the serious salaries, expenses, the last model cars and so on,” – states the head of the Ozurgeti regional organization of “National Forum.”

Teacher by profession, 68 year old lady says that she does not have information about people working in the local government, neither has she heard about their salaries.

“Nobody has ever come here and I’ve never bothered anyone. I don’t think the extended staff and so much expenses are needed,” – said the lady who restrained from publicly saying her name. As she said, she just has general information that the public figures have higher salaries than the teachers.”