Noisy Reorganization in Kutaisi City Hall

Shorena Kakabadze, Kutaisi

Dimitry Kopalyani, who was appointed to the position of the Kutaisi City Mayor on June 5 after his 22-year working in the USA, started his activities in the City Hall with large-scaled reorganization. According to the Transparency International –Georgia, after parliamentary elections of 2012, 88 employees were sacked from the City Hall.

The reorganization touched almost every service including administrative supervision, public service and amenities, architecture, economy, property management, healthcare and social service units. Culture Service was divided into two offices. Consequently, heads and big part of personnel were dismissed.

“It is impossible that 800 people work in the city hall of such a small city whilst only 400 people work in the City Hall of London. Kutaisi City Hall will recruit new personnel via competition. We have discussed this issue with the chairman of the Kutaisi City Council. The competition will be announced in a few days,” Dimitry Kopalyani said.

Despite the opposition from the council members from the National Movement, majority voted for the reorganization in the city council.

Dismissed employees protested reorganization at the Kutaisi City Hall. Former public servants applied to local offices of the Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association and Transparency International – Georgia. Several lawsuits were drafted and Kutaisi City Hall will discuss them in a few days.

TI-Georgia issued legal consultations on about 30 former employees of the Kutaisi City Hall. Eleven lawsuits were prepared and lodged to the City Court. Two more applications on Vice-mayor Amiran Dzotsenidze and Kote Rayani will be lodged to the court in near future.

“Reorganization does not include dismissal of people from work. Working places were not reduced in the city hall as a result of reorganization. For example, number of service heads did not reduce because number of service units was not reduced either. So, personnel reductions were not proper motive for the dismissal of some people; though changes happened. Part of employees were fired, another part remained. It is unclear why people remained in the office or why new people were recruited when no professional rating process was conducted in the city hall. For example, one person had worked in the city hall for 31 years. For sure he is experienced employer and it was impossible to fire him without any reasons,’ lawyer of TI-Georgia’s Kutaisi office Theo Zakarashvili told humanrights.ge.

Head of Center for the Protection of Civil Interests Manana Managadze told humanrights.ge that reorganization process already raised some questions.

“I cannot say that those personnel changes in the Kutaisi City Hall contradicted any law or legal act. Optimization process, selection of personnel, etc are another point. Questions and some doubts really exist. Society requests to answer those questions both about dismissed public servants and vacancy announcements in the city hall,” Managadze 

Representatives of the local organizations of political parties state that reorganization process was necessary and timely:

“It is not necessary to have 800 loafers in the Kutaisi City Hall. They are National Movement members and their activists have wasted the city budget for many years already. New government of the city received horrible heritage from the previous one,” said Giorgi Tsulaia, chairman of the Free Georgia’s Kutaisi organization.

Kutaisi City Hall intends to set up Public Council to monitor the transparency of budget expenditure.