Chiatura Management Company says production will resume only under reorganisation conditions

Chiatura Management Company (CMC), the management company of Georgian Manganese, a manganese mining company in the western Georgian town of Chiatura, has stated ‘the restoration and reorganisation of mining production in Chiatura has been planned’. The mine’s operations have been suspended since October 2024.

On Tuesday, CMC said that reorganisation ‘means that the changes will affect all links, both technical personnel and administrative employees’.

‘This is the only way to return to profitable, stable and safe operations’, the statement said.

‘In parallel with the reorganisation, technical inspections of closed mines will begin. After studying each mine, restoration — de-sedimentation works will begin’.

For 55 days, thousands of demonstrators in Chiatura, including miners and their families, have been preventing the removal of manganese out of Chiatura, and have continued to demand the state’s involvement in mediating the crisis between private companies and miners.

The company ‘decisively’ declared that mining operations in Chiatura will either reopen with a model based on new rules or they will not be restored at all.

The CMC claimed that ‘it is impossible to resume production under picketing conditions’ and that the process can’t be started while the mines are blocked.

According to the CMC, the locals have had the mines ‘paralysed’ for over a year, describing the situation at the Shukruti and Korokhnali mines as ‘particularly dire’.

The CMC said the company ‘would have extracted more than 70% of the ore’ from these mines.

‘This loss of this magnitude directly harms both the company and poses a threat to the region’,  the statement read.

The CMC said that Mikheil Sotski will lead the production resumption process.

According to local media, Sotski, described by CMC as a ‘highly qualified manager’ who ‘managed the most complex mining technology projects for years’, is a Russian citizen and still the general director of the mining enterprise Saknakhshiri company in Tkibuli.

Saknakhshiri is a Georgian-Ukrainian company and is the sole coal mining company in Georgia.

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The CMC statement claimed Sotski was invited as an expert to the working group established within the framework of the Tripartite Commission for Social Partnership, which was created under the Ministry of Health and Labour, and includes the company, the government, and the General Trade Union Confederation (GTUC). Nonetheless, the GTUC is not widely trusted amongst the protesting miners.

After the CMC Tuesday statement, miners again called on the government to pay attention to them.

‘Otherwise, we will have to confront you. If you are the sellers of the people and the country, you too cannot allow us to sell the city to you, to leave the people empty-handed and hungry. Pay attention to us before it is too late for you, before we turn on you’, miner Merab Saralidze said.

‘I have a question for the government, why are you participating in the elections? Why do you say that you own the country and take care of it, if the problems of the people, the country do not concern you? If you are not responsible for the country and the people, why do we need such a government at all? Or why do we need elections? Why should the people have hope in you? Why are you conducting pre-election campaigns, will we do this, will we do that, if you are completely dysfunctional? If everything should be in the hands of entities and investors, should they decide the fate of the country, the city, the people?’.

‘We can do more, mobilise more people, we can even finish you off because the population in different territories of Georgia opposes you, because you abandoned them in poverty, sacrificed them to the interests of entities’, Saralidze said.

The protests against Georgian Manganese, which holds the license for manganese extraction in Chiatura, originally began on 28 February in the centre of Chiatura. At the time, miners repeatedly demanded a meeting with a government representative.

Georgian Manganese is the largest employer in Chiatura. Its contractor, Chiatura Management Company, claimed to be operating a dozen mines in the municipality.

In October 2024, Georgian Manganese suspended operations in the mines, citing financial difficulties.

However, on 7 March, it was announced that Georgian Manganese and the Chiatura Management Company would no longer resume underground operations in Chiatura at any point in the future due to ‘financial unprofitability’.

Subsequently, the Chiatura Management Company reportedly filed for bankruptcy and laid off 3,500 of its employees.

As of the time of this publication, the miners’ protest is ongoing.

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