Kutaisi’s Hydro Meteorological Observatory’s former employee, Nargiza Svintradze, applied to the “Human Right Centre”. She demands the board of the observatory to pay the frozen salaries. It turned out that the debt has amounted to 300-400 lari. Another 30 employees of the observatory face similar problems as Nargiza Svintradze.
In the middle of December, 2005 all employees for the observatory were told to sign resignations, because of a possible testing. In fact no testing was held. The employees received the order on their firing from the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources before the New Year holiday. Since the people worked under labor contracts, the board fired employees without compensating their two-months-salaries as it is envisaged in the law.
Besides the mentioned compensation, former employees for the Hydro Meteorological Observatory did not receive salaries for 1998-2000.
As it was found out, after the abolishment of the hydro meteorological office and putting it under the charge of the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources one-year-contracts were signed with employees every year. Therefore, while renewing the contracts the progressive reduction was carried out, thus, consequently early in 2005 only 189 employees were left in the West department of the observatory; early in 2006 their number reduced to 75, and now there are only 28 of them working in the observatory.
The reorganization had influenced the status of Kutaisi hydro meteorological observatory and today it is a Kolkheti branch for the Monitoring and Forecasting Center.
“Recently thorough reorganization has been carried out in out system. People, who served the organization during many years honestly, were fired without any explanations. Now, nobody thinks to compensate these people,” said Avtandil kvachakidze, the head of the Kolkheti branch of the center.
As it was found out, a certain employee of the observatory managed to receive his salary through court.
Having received legal consultations at the Human Rights Center’s Kutaisi office, former employees of the observatory applied to the board of their former working place to receive individual notifications about their salaries. As soon as they receive the requested documents, they will appeal to the court against the board of the Observatory.
Shorena Kakabadze, Kutaisi
