On December 19, at 12:00 pm Human Rights Center will hold press-conference in its office about illegal dismissal of employees of the Georgian Post Ltd.

Human Rights Center demands the director general of the Georgian Post Levan Chikvaidze to restore illegally fired employees to their working places.

Chairman of the Communications Trade Union Suliko Kashia will also attend the press-conference and will present the position of the Trade Union about the decision of the director general of the Georgian Post.

Former employees of the Georgian Post applied to Human Rights Center several days ago. They said that after the parliamentary elections new management team with Levan Chikvaidze as a director general came in office. Chikvaidze said in his TV-interview that he was not going to fire anybody from the Ltd and intended to recruit only professionals in the Post. Despite that, soon Levan Chikvaidze annulled labor contracts with the post personnel without any grounds (some contracts were permanent, some contracts were one-year and some were signed for different terms) and signed new, one-month contracts with the personnel though they differed from old ones only in terms. Big part of employees refused to sign new contracts; consequently Levan Chikvaidze met about 400 employees and promised nobody would be fired from job. Post employees trusted the director-general and signed one-month labor contracts.

Despite his promise, one month later, Levan Chikvaidze did not prolong contracts with some employees and as he clarified those people were inserted on the reserve list; he recruited new inexperienced people instead them.

The fired employees applied to the TV-Channels to find out situation and requested TV-journalists to cover their meeting with the director general. As a result situation got tenser in the post – Levan Chikvaidze got angry and directly told employees from the reserve list that they would be fired.

The employees were rebuked for not wearing uniforms whilst the Ltd did not have any uniforms for the personnel even in its warehouse. On December 9, everybody was called to the post where they met deputy head of the Tbilisi Post Department who informed them about dismissal “because director general Levan Chikvaidze did not trust them.”

Human Rights Center