Member of Dusheti Municipal Council Threatened Participants of Protest Demonstration

Information Center of Mtskheta-Mtianeti

Former employees of Dusheti district service office of the Georgian United Water-Distribution Company, who protested in front of the Dusheti district administration on September 27, were summoned to the district administration on the same evening. Member of Dusheti municipal council Zurab Otiashvili told them they had breached the law by holding protest demonstration and informing journalists about it.

Protesters demanded to fire manager of Dusheti district service center Vakhtang Kipshidze. They accused him of non-ethic and rude behavior in the office.

“He is cursing girls in our office. He is head of the office but we could not count free bottles of beer in his room. Very often he came to the office drunk. We often saw him without t-shirts,” said the former employees who wrote resignation letters two days ago.

Dusheti district residents sued Vakhtang Kipshidze, who is former district governor, for hooliganism. Residents of Ioseliani Street told the ICMM they have been hearing cursing from the Dusheti service office of the Water Distribution Company for the last three months.

“We are bothered with cursing and screaming in the office. They are permanently quarreling,” said Nanuli Mamulashvili, resident of Ioseliani Street.

“Several times my mother asked them to stop cursing because people are living around and we do not want to hear them at all. We have had this problem since the office has new manager,” said Ketino Sagirashvili, resident of the same street.

Vakhtang Kipshidze does not comment on the accusations.

“Former technical manager Gela Machavariani was unfairly dismissed from the office. We had been faithfully serving the company for many years. But Kipshidze has been incurring losses to the company since his appointment. He was not giving fuel and equipment to Machavariani but compelled him to work. How could he work?! Kipshidze used to seize collected money from bill-collectors. He incurred much loss to the company. Now, after we started protesting, he got afraid, called bill-collectors and made each of them transfer 400 GEL to the bank. We quitted working because of his rudeness; otherwise, how could we lose job in current unemployment?! We all want to work for the Water Distribution Company but they should fire Kipshidze first,” said former employees of the service center.

The protest of the workers lasted till evening yesterday. Afterwards, they were summoned to the district governor. Member of municipal council Zurab Otiashvili, district governor Lasha Janashvili, chair of the municipal council Tsaro Sadzaglishvili, deputy regional governor Givi Maisuradze and representatives of the Water Distribution Company attended the meeting in the office of the Dusheti district governor. The workers did not change their demands during the meeting. However, Otiashvili told them problems cannot be resolved by protest demonstrations in “modern Georgia” and they should not have informed journalists about their protest.

“Otiashvili had copied out the photos of our protest taken by the ICMM’s journalists. He told us we had breached the law for having filed resignation letters, having held demonstration and informed the journalists about it. Similar things do not happen in today’s Georgia. Entire Georgia heard about your problem. It is crime; you should have applied to me. However, we had informed Otiashvili on the day of filing resignation letters but he did not fix the problem as it was holiday. At the end he told us: we will discuss your issue in three days and will call you afterwards,” said the workers who participated in the meeting.

Chair of Dusheti municipal council Tsaro Sadzaglishvili confirmed the information about the meeting.

Tsaro Sadzaglishvili: We really met the workers but no concrete decisions were made. Those people serve our population and we attended the meeting as representatives of the local self-government. We heard arguments of both parties and we will discuss their issue tomorrow.

-Why did Otiashvili attend the meeting?

- When workers heard that Zurab was in the building, they asked us to call him to the meeting because they trusted him. I asked deputy governor Beso to call him to the room.

-The member of the municipal council told the workers they had breached the law by protesting and informing journalists about their problems. Do you agree with him?

-It is absurd. It is not right; he has not said similar thing at the meeting.

-Did any other members of the municipal council attend the meeting?

-nobody did.

“We heard their problems. The Company will make the final decision. We cannot interfere in their affairs except meeting the population and hearing their complaints,” said Dusheti district governor Lasha Janashvili.

ICMM got in touch with Zurab Otiashvili several times but he refused to make comments over the phone; and it was impossible to arrange meeting with him.

The representatives of the Water Distribution Company said they have started negotiations with the worker though concrete decision was not made yet.

“Our administration met those people and the negotiation process has started. However, we do not know yet who and how many people will be re-employed,” said head of press-center of the Georgian United Water Distribution Company Jilda Machavariani.