Educational Attack on Traders

In Kutaisi, local government fights against the traders with various methods. In the past, the representatives of the corresponding bodies used to push the peasants away from the area of the central market, where these people sold their products. Now the officials use different methods. They are much more polite and try to explain the traders the situation in more civilized forms. Anyway, the peasants are suppressed. They cannot sell their products.

Tsitso Kufaradzze, a resident of the Khoni district, is an only bread-winner in her family. She sells the herb from her own garden in Kutaisi every day.  Kufaradze said that she cannot earn much money by selling the herb but it is enough to feed her family. She has not been to Kutaisi market for a week already. “What shall I do there? They do not let us trade for a long time already. A young man knocked me down twice and I dropped the herbs on the ground. He might have not a mother, or he has never been poor. They order us to go inside the market and pay a receipt for a stall there. I have to trade three days outside to collect enough money to buy the receipt. Now they have distributed leaflets among us and thus we will get information from those papers how we have to behave. Will those leaflets feed my hungry children? Instead, they should have given us the promised places for trading in the market and allowed us to earn our living,” said Ms. Tsitso.

The Administrative Office of the local self-government really promised the traders alternative places to continue their activities. According to the officials’ statements, it was the inner territory of the market. However, it has become clear that there is not enough room to place nearly one hundred traders there. 

“We do not fight these people. Simply, they should understand the situation properly. It is impossible to create various conditions for traders inside and outside the market. The traders inside pay the fee for their stalls what goes to the budget, and those who trade outside do not pay anything,” said Zaza Suladze, the head of the City Service Department of the Kutaisi Administrative Observation Department.

As for the leaflets, they were really distributed among the traders. The officials of the Administrative Observation Department undertook educational mission and tried to explain the furious traders the legislation peacefully. The leaflets give information about those fines what traders will have to pay unless they obey the law. More precisely, a person who tries to trade outside will be fined with 50 GEL under the Georgian Administrative Code, Article 153. Besides that s/he will be confiscated their products. If a person will resist the law enforcers, s/he will be fined with 100 GEL or be sentenced to administrative imprisonment (seven days).

Although the officials implemented their educational mission, the traders think that their rights are abused and the local government deprives them from the chance of earning their living. The traders said that they will not part with their trading places, which they have gained through much trouble. They are ready to find the justice by all means.

Shorena Kakabadze, Kutaisi