Picketers in downtown Tbilisi demand paying attention to jobless people's problems

Today, in front of the buildings of the State Chancellery and the Parliament of Georgia, the founders of the Union of Unemployed have held an action with a demand to pay attention to the problems of the people who have lost their jobs. The picket was dated to the International Day to Fight Unemployment.

The "Caucasian Knot" correspondent was told by Tamar Iovashvili, the Chair of the Union of Unemployed, that today they sent letters on behalf of the Union to the Prime Minister of Georgia Nika Gilauri and the Parliamentary Speaker David Bakradze with a demand to pay attention to the miserable status of the unemployed in Georgia.

"The unemployed in Georgia have no rights, although all of these rights are envisioned by the Constitution. Its Article 32 expressly proclaims that the state should take care of its unemployed; and if there is no way to employ them, the jobless person should get a status, to participate in the social insurance system and receive an allowance," said Ms Iovashvili.

The above letters demand from the state to organize the labour registry office and fix the status of the jobless person in the legislation. According to the leader of the Union of Unemployed, now Georgia has no such labour office, which has a negative impact on the employment of the population."

Among the first to support the Union of Unemployed were the public organizations "Civil Movement of Refugees" and "Union of Free Associations".

"Most refugees are today jobless; therefore, this problem is very topical for us. Our slogan is 'No to Unemployment!' We have our own projects to address the problem; and we'll fight for implementing them," said Gennady Kekeliya, deputy chair of the above refugees' movement.

Aleko Shalamberidze, Chairman of the "Union of Free Associations", believes that unemployment is a general problem; therefore, he was among the first to support the new organization.

"Our Union brings together people with similar problems: they are refugees, teachers, shareholders, deprived of their shares in some businesses, and street vendors, banned from selling their goods in the streets. We've united all these people in our Union, because there are general problems," he said.

According to the official statistics, in 2010, Georgia had a total of 1,944,900 persons of working age; of them 316,900 persons were officially recognized as unemployed; 618,000 persons are employed workers; and 1,700,000 are considered to be self-employed (small businesses, farmers, etc.).