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ICMM Sued Dusheti District Administration at the Court

August 1, 2012
Information Center of Mtskheta-Mtianeti

Information Center of Mtskheta-Mtianeti (www.icmm.ge) filed a lawsuit against Dusheti district administration at the Mtskheta district court. The online outlet blames the district administration in having breached the requirements of General Administrative Code of Georgia.

Head of ICMM Gela Mtivlishvili said that on July 9 the ICMM petitioned and requested public information from the person responsible for the release of public information at the Dusheti district administration.

“ICMM is involved in the monitoring project of the State Program for the Assistance of Villages that is implemented by the nongovernmental organization Center for Civil Activities with the support of the Open Society Georgia Foundation. We needed some public information for the monitoring process; namely: amount of the allocated funds on Dusheti district in the frame of the State Program for the Assistance of Villages in 2010, 2011 and 2012; how much money was spent on each village; what was done in each village and which companies had implemented the work. As a rule, the district administration should store the requested information in its archive and had to release it immediately. However, the district administration did not release the information even within the maximum time limit of 10 days, as it is requested by the law. Thus, on July 19, we filed administrative complaint to the Dusheti district temporary governor Besik Shagashvili. Despite our complaint, we have not received the requested information yet. They did not even notify to us if they had accepted our administrative complaint. In fact, the local authority did not reply to our petition and complaint. So, we decided to appeal to the court,” Gela Mtivlishvili said.

ICMM requests the Mtskheta district court to order the Dusheti district administration to immediately release the requested public information. Besides that, ICMM requests the Dusheti district governor to impose disciplinary liability on the person responsible for the release of public information for not having performed his duties.

Mtivlishvili said, in parallel to lodging a suit to the court, ICMM appeals to the Public Defender of Georgia and Mtskheta-Mtianeti regional governor to respond on the violation.

It is not first time when Dusheti district administration did not release requested public information on the ICMM. Special chapter is dedicated to the facts violating the right to the access to public information in Public Defender’s 645-page 2011 Report. The Ombudsman is focused on incompletely released public information and breached deadlines for the release of information in his report. Giorgi Tugushi mentioned ICMM’s other examples in his report as well. 

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