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Become a memberMiners from the central Georgian town of Chiatura, who are demanding the resumption of halted mining operations with state intervention, have arrived in Tbilisi. On Monday, they held a protest at the government administration and demanded that the authorities take action to address their issues.
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 suspended operations in the mines in October 2024, citing financial difficulties.
However, on 7 March, it was announced that Georgian Manganese and its contractor, 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.
The miners who arrived in Tbilisi on Monday emphasised that, aside from the manganese industry in Chiatura, there are no alternative employment opportunities. According to miner Tariel Mikatsadze, this factor has placed Georgian Manganese in a ‘monopoly position’, thereby allowing the company to ‘treat employees as it pleases’.
This is the latest in a series of protests against Georgian Manganese, which residents of towns and villages in the Chiatura region have consistently accused of damaging their homes through its mining operations, while workers have protested labour violations.
‘The only thing the government clings to is that it’s a private company, and there's nothing they can do about it’, Mikatsadze told RFE/RL.
‘Therefore, our main demand is that Georgian Manganese, which has lied to us repeatedly, must leave its license, leave Chiatura, and the company should be handed over to state and public control’, he added.
The protesting miners have also asked the company to settle any wage arrears.
When Georgian Manganese announced the suspension of operations in October, it promised that miners would still receive 60% of their salaries during the stoppage period. However, as miner Davit Chinchaladze told OC Media, some employees have yet to receive two months’ worth of salaries, while others are still waiting for three months’ pay.
In a related demand, during the rally held at the government administration on Monday, the miners requested the resolution of banking issues they faced during the stoppage. Mikatsadze said that many locals have taken out mortgage loans in the past, and the inability to repay them was putting their property at risk.
The Georgian government responded to the demand for the state to take over the management of underground mining on 20 March. Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze stated, ‘In general, for the state to take over a private enterprise is fundamentally wrong’.
‘Of course, we are as interested as possible in ensuring that everyone who worked in this mine has decent pay. It is a difficult issue, there is a global problem here, product prices have seriously fallen, which is why the enterprise has lost profitability, and against this background, they are paying 60% of salaries for several months, so that, in fact, the mines are no longer working’, he said.
He added that it was difficult to demand that private businesses pay salaries when the enterprise is not functioning.
‘They [paid salaries] out of social responsibility, but you can’t continue to do this all the time’, Kobakhidze said.
On 20 March, the Georgian Ministry of Health stated that the issue was discussed during a meeting of the ‘Tripartite Commission for Social Partnership’, which was attended by several government officials, the chair of the Georgian Trade Unions Confederation (GTUC), the President of the Employers’ Association, and ‘other representatives of the sector’.
After the meeting, the miners demanded that the government include a representative of employees in the group created in connection with the crisis situation in Chiatura.
Their official statement claimed that the issue was complex and, given the current difficult situation, the commission decided to form a group made up of state representatives and employer and employee associations, which, taking into account the actual circumstances, would discuss ways to solve the problem and make the most painless decision.
However, as Chinchaladze told OC Media, the statement referred to the inclusion of the GTUC, rather than the direct participation of the miners themselves, which was unacceptable to them. Georgian Manganese is the largest mining and ferroalloy manufacturing company in Georgia, with up to 6,000 employees, according to RFE/RL. It owns the sole licence to operate mines in the Chiatura region.
OC Media
Kakha Kaladze also emphasised that it was ‘completely incomprehensible’ for someone to work at city hall while simultaneously criticising its policies.
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Georgia’s fifth president Salome Zourabichvili originally submitted her suit to the court in July 2024.
The identities of those sanctioned are unknown.
