Public Defender’s Visit in Imereti Finished with Meeting with Civil Society Organizations

Shorena Kakabadze, Imereti

Tents for homeless people, Tkibuli mine, penitentiary establishment # 14 and meeting with the representatives of local civil society and media organizations – it was agenda of the Public Defender’s business trip in Imereti region on February 6-7.

“It is good that we have information about different problems but it is better and more important to study situation on the place and personally meet the people in need,” Ucha Nanuashvili said during his meeting with media. 

He had the longest meeting with the administration and inmates of the penitentiary establishment # 14, so called Geguti prison. He met about one thousand prisoners, who were on hunger-strike for several days. 

Prisoners request resignation of several members of the prison administration; namely of the director, his deputy and head of security regime. They request to start investigation into the inhuman treatment of prison inmates. They claim several prisoners were inhumanly treatmed.

“Situation from the past time shall not continue in future. We expected that the administration would make regulations stricter and try to meet the requirements of the law. However, on the other hand there are problems and members of the administration do not deny it. Namely, they have established some regulations, extra prohibitions and restrictions which are not envisaged under the law. For example, the law does not prohibit prisoner to receive jeans trousers in the penitentiary establishment. So, I think, there is different problem here. The administration wishes to have more control to make the law work in the establishment. Both parties have problems. It is fact that discipline is necessary because functioning of the closed institution is impossible without discipline. But, it is inadmissible to use of force for the sake of discipline. Unfortunately, similar fact was confirmed. The incident shall be adequately responded and the perpetrator be punished under the law,” the Public Defender said.

He added that there are problems but situation is not alarming. “It is important to regulate situation in the frame of the law. I know that it is difficult to shift from one into another system in one day but the law shall be necessarily followed. Both parties will have to admit the rule of law. Otherwise, it will be difficult to manage the process and we will return in the past.”

Employees of Tkibuli SakNakhshiri (Georgian Coal) spoke about workplace safety and lowering of the retirement age with the Public Defender. They asked Ucha Nanuashvili to mediate them with the government with regard to their problems and the Ombudsman promised them to send recommendations to relevant institutions about their concerns.

“The only request of the miners is to attract more attention from the government. Our main purpose was to see the situation and problems of the miners on the place, in the pits. I listened to the opinions of both management and the miners. Although much was done there, there are still many problems, that should be resolved. For example, safety of the workplace, which is the key issue of our recommendation. The state shall implement its duties. A special agency shall be established, which will regularly monitor safety of workplaces,” Ucha Nanuashvili said.

Public Defender also spoke about lowering of the retirement age. He thinks general standard shall be changed and different approaches shall be elaborated to the issue considering the difficulty of the work. The allowances, which worked for miners during many years, shall be restored again.

Ucha Nanuashvili spoke about expanding the activity areas during his meeting with CSO representatives. Analytic department will be created within the Public Defender’s Office, which will analyze the information received from the regions; based on that information the PDO will prepare special report.

Public Defender spoke about new joint project of the PDO and Georgian National Library. Namely, open discussions on the most urgent problems will be organized on last Fridays of each month, and representatives from different fields of society will participate in it. First discussion will be organized on February 28th and construction of Khudon HES will be the topic of the first meeting.