Librarian VS School Director

Aleksi Bezhanishvili

Labor rights of teachers are one of the most acute problems in Georgia. According to the president of Free Trade Union of Teachers and Scientists of Georgia Maia Kobakhidze a lot of teachers file complaints to the Trade Union. Several days ago, librarian from the Tkibuli district Public School # 7 got in touch with the Trade Union and Human Rights Center and requested their help.

Izolda Barbakadze told the Human Rights Center that school director Davit Kipiani illegally sacked her from school. “He was very rude and impolite with me in the presence of my colleagues. He said he was going sack me because the school could not pay my salary. Several months are left before I retire and I work on the salary of 50 GEL (approx. 25 Euro). So, how could that money be a burden for the school when the director receives 500 GEL (250 Euro) per month for his work in the school with 86 pupils. Moreover, the pupils really need our rich library which I maintained until now. Now, they will apparently close down the library too.”

According to Izolda Barbakadze, she received serious stress because of the director’s rudeness and needed to call ambulance. Because of heavy snow, ambulance called a rescue team to take her to the newly constructed hospital in Tkibuli where she was kept for a short time and then dismissed home. Barbakadze said the director had not warned her about possible fire in advance.

School director Dato Kipiani denied the information about having insulted the librarian during his interview with the Human Rights Center and said he had notified Izolda Barbkadze about dismissal in written form in advance – a letter was sent to her home address and handed to her husband. The notification stated that she would receive salary before March 19 and afterwards she was dismissed from job.

“When drafting the order on her dismissal, I relied on the decree of the deputy education minister Giorgi Chakhnashvili, which was issued on March 6. According to this decree, schools with small contingent will have new working schedule. I had to reduce educational manager of the school besides the librarian. I could not do anything else. It happened not only in our school but in all small schools,” Davit Kipiani told the Human Rights Center.

Izolda Barbakadze claims that the school director did not clarify official reason of her dismissal. The director’s decree has not been registered by the education service department of the district administration.

The decree of the deputy minister Giorgi Chakhnashvili is not published on the official website of the Education Ministry. Neither Maia Kobakhidze has information about this decree.

“Many teachers complain about illegal dismissal from schools but nobody has mentioned the March 6 decree yet. I have no information about it. Our lawyers study Izolda Barbakadze’s case and they have already found some violations. The woman had health problems because of nervous attack and we mostly contacted her on the phone. After recovery, she intends to arrive in Tbilisi and we will prepare the suit against Davit Kipiani together,” Maia Kobakhidze said.

She said that according to case materials, on March 12, director of the Tkibuli Public School # 7 Davit Kipiani tried to forcibly hand the dismissal notification about to the librarian that ended with incident. The main violation is that Izolda Bakradze was working as a librarian and received meager salary of 50 GEL since September 2011 without being on the working schedule. Other details will be mentioned in the suit.