Workers from Sighnaghi Demand their Wages

Nearly three hundred people who were hired for the restoration of Sighnaghi demand their wages. They have been gathering in front of the district administrative building everyday this month and demand their wages. Construction company “New City” paid their one-month wages after the people appealed to journalists for help. Another construction company, “Tbilisi”, has not paid them yet.

Millions of lari were allotted from the state budget for the restoration of Sighnaghi. However, despite many petitions information about the exact amount of the apportioned money has not been sent to us yet. The former President of Georgia and current presidential candidate Mikheil Saakashvili made statements on various occasions that nearly 15 million lari was spent on the restoration. The people who personally took part in the restoration works say that much more money was spent in reality. It should also be pointed out that the whole sum was not only spent on the restoration works.

Saakashvili mentioned in one of his speeches in the city that a restored Sighnaghi is a European city and according to his initiative Kutaisi, the regional center of the Imereti Region, should be restored too. Thus, construction companies rushed to Kutaisi and stopped their works in Sighnaghi. The workers employed by those companies found themselves in an awkward situation; hundreds of people have not received their salaries for several months. The workers said in their conversation with the Human Rights Center that they had appealed to the employers for several times in vain.

“I was calling them and urging them to tell us the exact date of the distribution of our wages. Representatives of the companies could not answer us. Later, they did not answer our calls at all. We have been gathering in front of the Sighnaghi administrative building for several weeks and demand our wages; but in vain. Neither the governor nor other officials have paid any attention to us,” said Ioseb Dzuliashvili.

One more employee, Malkhaz Sofromadze, said that they have applied to the Kakheti regional Administration regarding the salaries. “Gubernator Gia Natsvlishvili and deputy Gubernator Davit Tsiskarishvili monitored the restoration works personally. Thus, we applied to them because of our problem. Nobody paid attention to us. We were not given telephone numbers of the abovementioned officials.

It has been too cold recently. We have children and we cannot heat our houses in this cold. We demand the wages we earned. We need that money to support our families. If they do not satisfy our demands we will not give up protesting. Although the local offices of the construction companies are closed and nobody is there, we will go to Tbilisi and demand our wages there. We will use all forms of protest,” claimed the workers.

The employees said that only the facades and roofs were repaired in Sighnaghi. The quality of the implemented work was low and only the buildings in the central streets were reconstructed. The Human Rights Center got confirmation about this information after having visited several buildings in the city center.

Several attempts to get in touch with construction company “Tbilisi” failed. The Center could not find out what was the total amount of money the employees had to receive from the company. Malkhaz Zibzibadze, the head of the company, permanently has his mobile phone turned off.

While speaking with the representatives of the Sighnaghi Municipality and Kakheti regional Administrations, the Center found out that construction company “Tbilisi” is an umbrella organization of “New City”.

It is worth to mention that since journalists got interested in the situation the representatives of “New City” Company paid the wages of nearly one hundred workers, but others are still waiting for their wages.

Gela Mtivlishvili, Kakheti