Drivers of Gori Rout Mini-Buses Complain about Breached Rights

Lado Bichashvili, Shida Kartli

Drivers of rout mini-buses in Gori held warning demonstration. They protested negligence to their interests and blamed the administration of the company VTG in the violation of their rights and verbal assault. About 30 drivers unified and established an Ltd. 

Ioseb Koniashvili: “The director did not protect our rights. So we quitted the company and now he is insulting us for that; we did not like working conditions and decided to quit.”

Giorgi Bzishvili also quitted the VTG and became head of the new Ltd. He clarified that Ltd has about 30 shareholders and they will jointly protect their rights. “The company did not protect our rights and we left it; we set up a new Ltd and here everything is agreed with drivers.”

Director of the Ltd VTG Zviad Mchedlidze denied accusation of the drivers and said “I did not create problems for them and their accusations are groundless,” Zviad Mchedlidze said.

Head of the Georgian Transportation Trade Union Lavrenti Alania also arrived at the demonstration and spoke about violation of the drivers’ rights by the employer company. “We try to combat strikes of drivers and resolve the problems through negotiations; I urge the local government to assist us in resolving the problem because the drivers will go on strike and the government will be responsible for that; they should take relevant measures because drivers’ rights were breached.”

Several months ago, drivers of route mini-buses faced similar problems with the Ltd AutoTrans too and they started strike with the request to improve situation. For that reason, public transport was paralyzed in the town during several days. As a result, drivers quitted AutoTrans and moved to VTG hoping to improve their working conditions but today they quitted the second company for the same reasons. Part of drivers set up the transport company now.