Adjara’s Head of Government Complains over Finance Ministry

Levan Varshalomidze, head of the local government in Adjara Autonomous Republic, criticized the central authorities, in particular the Ministry of Finance, for a failure to tackle unemployment for locals in Adjara.

Varshalomidze was speaking at a government session in Tbilisi on April 7. His address to the cabinet members was recorded by the television stations, which was in itself unusual, because usually the government holds close-door sessions. Only in the beginning of sessions cameramen are allowed inside the chamber to record a opening remarks by the PM or by the President (in case the latter attends session) and then the cabinet sitting continues behind the closed doors.

Speaking at the session Varshalomidze said: “Many residents of Adjara have no jobs and pin no hopes on future. Creating employment opportunities for the local residents is a top priority for me… I expect the Georgian [central] authorities to urgently address this problem.”

He then specified and said that out of 250 employees of the Finance Ministry’s customs department in Adjara over 60 were not native residents of the Autonomous Republic. “A local resident of Sarpi [a village in Adjara where border-crossing point and customs checkpoint is located at the border with Turkey] can not become even a cleaner at the local customs,” Varshalomidze said.

When he said that Finance Minister, Nika Gilauri, interrupted him by saying: “There are 360 employees in the customs [in Adjara] and only 14 of them are Tbilisites.” Varshalomidze, however, responded to Gilauri and told him to recheck the figures. PM Lado Gurgenidze intervened then and told the both: “We will hold discussions later.”

Varshalomidze also said that despite increased investments and large number of ongoing construction projects in the region, locals were not benefiting much from it; he also said foreign citizens were taking away jobs from locals. By saying this he echoed an earlier statement by President Saakashvili, who said in February while visiting Batumi in Adjara that the authorities should have paid more attention on retraining of local population in order to help them get jobs as workers on numerous construction sites.

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