Local self-governments forgot to limit unreasonable expenses

Lado Bitchashvili, Shida Kartli 

Although the government members many times declared that their policy is to suspend unreasonable expenses and administrative costs in public agencies, nowadays, the senior government officials avoid public statements about it. 

The “Waste Detector“, which studies the expenditure of the local self-governments’ budgets, publishes the figures, which prove that the government forgot about their declared policy of reasonable expenditure and it was well-demonstrated as a result of monitoring of the budget expenditures in the Gori municipality city hall. Gori municipality city hall spent 20 138 GEL on representation expenses in 2018 and 39 223 GEL in 2019. Mostly, those funds were spent on the arrangement of events, parties and gifts for the guests. In 2018, Gori City Hall funded 14 parties in the restaurants and 27 parties and events in 2019. Gori municipality mayor Konstantine Tavzarashvili explained doubled representation expenses with the increased number of guests in the municipality. 

“In comparison to 2018, in 2019 we really increased the representation expenses because we had more guests. On May 26, on the Independence Day of Georgia, we had guests from 6 countries. In addition to that, city mayors of various countries visited us at different times and during their visits we signed cooperation memorandums. We spent 21 000 GEL on the parties; 39 223 GEL includes their accommodation costs and expenses for gifts,” Konstantine Tavzarashvili told humanrights.ge 

Waste Detector studied the funds allocated for the communication expenses of the Gori municipality city hall and discovered that the local authority had spent 1.3 times more funds on communication than on representation, that made up 79 228 GEL. In 2018, the City Hall spent 41 465 GEL on communication expenses and 39 223 GEL in 2019. 

“Public officials use service cell numbers; the tariff for such service phone numbers within the country is 5 tetri per minute. Consequently, with the money they spent on communication in 2018-2019, the representatives of the municipal city hall could make 15 845 phone calls and everyday each of them should have spoken 13 hours,” the information disseminated by the Waste Detector reads.

Gori municipality mayor Konstantine Tavzarashvili said that according to the contract agreement with the MagtiCom, 280 employees of the city hall use 10, 20 and 30 GEL package of the company. 

“We have 280 employees; the heads of services get 30 GEL package, heads of the units – 20 GEL package and specialists – 10 GEL package. We pay the company for the service based on the invoice in the end of month,” the mayor clarified that the tariff of phone packages depends on the load of imposed tasks on the employees. 

“The head of the unit has more tasks than a specialist; the head of the service has the most. Therefore, we have differentiated phone package limits for different positions. The senior officials have to make more calls with the population and their colleagues,” the mayor said. 

The members of the municipal assembly from the opposition political parties have questions with regard to budget expenditures from the last year budget. UNM member Vasilisa Jabakhidze said in 2019, over half million GEL was wasted from the local budget. 

“The Gori municipality city hall spent 213 000 GEL on bonuses in 2019 and the city hall staff members received bonuses without any verification while there are a number of failed projects. 33 000 GEL was spent in restaurants, 22 000 GEL was spent on business trips and we have questions about the reasonability of these expenses because the municipality did not benefit much from those business trips. When we have so many impoverished people and so many problems in the municipality, most funds are spent on the comfort of the mayor,” Vasilisa Jabakhidze said.

According to the Gori municipality city hall, in 2019, 19 000 GEL was spent on business trips – 9 000 GEL of it was spent on business trips abroad and 10 000 GEL inside the country. Konstantine Tavzarashvili said as a result of those business trips they implemented several infrastructural projects in the municipality.

“We had very important business trips abroad. We implemented exchange programs and funded travels of our students and sportsmen. Our representatives were in Poland and signed cooperative memorandums there; based on those memorandums the Polish side fully funded the construction of the kindergarten in Kveshi village; they also renovated the kindergarten in Tirdznisi village. We plan to implement infrastructural projects in Tsitsagiantkari with their financial support,” Mayor Konstantine Tavzarashvili said.

According to the mayor, in 2019, their employees received bonuses for Easter and New Year Holidays. At the same time, the mayor paid bonuses to the employees of the infrastructure and supervision services because of well performed jobs. 

“We paid bonuses to concrete employees of the infrastructure and supervision services because they did a great job – they implemented up to 500 projects in 2019. The municipality city hall has never implemented so many projects before and we wanted to encourage these people with awards. As for holiday bonuses, all employees received it for the Easter and New Year holidays,” Tavzarashvili clarified. 

As for the policy of reasonable expenditure in government bodies, the mayor said when they work hard, they spend money too. However, he stated that they reduced expenses for the fuel and moved 100 000 GEL from the fuel budget line into the infrastructural projects’ line. The mayor explained that they have purchased new service cars, which economically spend the fuel. Tavzarashvili said, they spent 248 000 GEL on five new service cars in 2019 that was reasonable expenditure of the budget funds aiming at the reduction of fuel expenses.