Fired for speaking out — the ‘cleansing’ of Georgia’s civil service

‘I’ll be honest with you, I felt like the ground was pulled out from under me. Although I expected it, I truly did expect it, it still felt like the ground  disappeared beneath my feet, and to this day, I haven’t emotionally recovered from it’, Nino Tkeshelashvili, the head of the Justice Ministry’s Department for the Rehabilitation and Social Reintegration of Convicts and Former Prisoners, tells OC Media.

Tkeshelashvili, who has served in the Ministry of Justice for 10 years, is now counting down her final days at the agency. On 31 December, she was informed that her contract, which expires on 1 February, would not be renewed.

‘It’s truly hard, both personally and emotionally, to come to terms with all of this’, she says.

Tkeshelashvili believes she was fired for joining a petition by psychologists and psychiatrists against the government’s halting of Georgia’s EU membership bid.

Tkeshelashvili said signing the petition was particularly important to her because as part of her job at the Justice Ministry, she had for years worked on initiatives from the EU and others to strengthen the state.

‘[The petition] also addressed the release of individuals who had been unlawfully detained, as well as the need to stop the violence, and of course, I agreed with those positions. That’s why I signed it.’

She notes that prior to signing, she was warned by her superiors that doing so would result in her dismissal, and that this message should also be passed on to her colleagues.

Tkeshelashvili’s story is far from unique. Since the protests started, social media has been awash with posts by civil servants claiming to have lost their jobs after publicly joining petitions against the halting of Georgia’s EU membership bid.

The number of such reports increased further after new legislation was introduced to simplify the ‘reorganisation’ process in public sector bodies, which was accompanied by statements from leading Georgian Dream officials highlighting their discontent with civil servants publicly criticising the government’s actions.

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For example, on 4 December, Tbilisi Mayor Kakha Kaladze called the signing of petitions by Tbilisi City Hall employees 'sabotage’, claiming it was part of a ‘coup plan’. He noted that such an attempt would ‘not go unanswered, of course, within the framework of the Constitution and the law’.

Following his speech, several Tbilisi City Hall employees were fired, including Taia Makharashvili, who had worked in the public sector for 11 years. Writing on Facebook on 27 December, the day she was fired as a Communications Manager, Makharashvili said the news was not unexpected.

‘It seems logical that the fate of someone like me — who co-authored and signed a statement in support of the Constitution and European integration, co-founded and serves on the board of the independent professional association of civil servants, and has openly expressed my views for years — would unfold in this political climate. It almost feels unnecessary to say that this is a political decision, especially after the series of statements from the leaders of the Georgian Dream’, she wrote.

Christina Chubinidze was also among the latest to be fired from Tbilisi City Hall. Although her dismissal order was issued on 31 December, she only learned about it recently after requesting the information herself.

‘We were not forgiven for our loyalty to the Constitution and our support for the country’s European values’, she wrote on Facebook.

‘They kept lying to us’

Kaladze’s threat that criticism of the government by public servants would ‘not go unanswered’ has been echoed by other officials.

Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze said in early December that by signing such petitions, public employees were ‘self-cleansing’ the civil service, implying those not loyal to the government had revealed themselves and could now be removed.

But despite these apparent admissions, the authorities have officially maintained that the dismissals were unrelated to the political positions of those being fired.

Several of those who were dismissed also noted convoluted or misleading statements listed as the reasoning for said dismissals.

According to Zurab Gegeshidze, he and his colleagues at the National Agency of Public Registry were informed by their supervisors that the systemic land registration project in Tbilisi, which surveys land parcels and registers land titles, was coming to an end. Gegeshidze dismisses this as a tactic designed to deceive them into resigning voluntarily.

‘They kept lying to us, saying that the Tbilisi project was finished, that we were no longer needed, and that we should submit our resignation letters. But I was even willing to move to the regions and work on assignments. I agreed to this, but they stubbornly kept lying, trying to get me to leave voluntarily and submit my resignation’, Gegeshidze tells OC Media.

‘When I agreed to relocate, they didn’t know what to do anymore, so they called me on 30 December to tell me I was fired. Meanwhile, the Tbilisi project continues as usual’, he says.

Gegeshidze, who had worked at the National Agency of Public Registry for three years, was among the hundreds of employees to sign a petition against the government’s EU U-turn, which he believes was the true reason for his dismissal.

Similarly, in November 2024, Tbilisi City Hall employee Giga Sopromadze joined a petition by Tbilisi City Hall employees condemning the country’s shift in foreign policy. According to him, 240 city hall employees signed the petition, of whom several dozen had already been dismissed, with the rest awaiting their fate.

Sopromadze first started working at Tbilisi City Hall in 2016 and was in charge of coordinating programmes for people with disabilities in the Healthcare and Social Services Department.

When he received his order of dismissal on 26 December, Sompromadze found the situation almost laughable, as the justification listed was that all disability-related programmes in Tbilisi were already established and that his work was done.

‘They tell people that everything is fine in Tbilisi regarding disability services, and no further work needs to be done. Over these eight years of work, I kept saying that we needed to include more groups, more people with disabilities, to make our work more effective. In response, we got this dismissal, and everything is framed as if everything is perfectly fine’, Sopromadze tells OC Media.

Though his dismissal only came in December, Sopromadze says that he was first made to feel unwelcome at Tbilisi City Hall as early as spring 2023, when he publicly expressed his stance against the foreign agent law. From that point on, Sopromadze was no longer invited to government meetings in Tbilisi. In March 2024, when he again voiced his opinion about the law, he was denied bonuses and was no longer provided with information about ongoing projects he was supposed to be involved in.

‘The services we implement, the standards, rules, and conditions we follow while developing these programmes and ensuring quality, are based entirely on European and American standards’, Sopromadze says.

‘However, the so-called Russian law [foreign agent law] labels the NGOs, the partners who helped us implement these services, as agents, and it forces us to treat our friends as agents and present their activities as hostile’.

Sopromadze believes the final straw came when he and others filed a request to establish a union for public sector employees. He notes that they submitted an application to the Public Service Hall on 25 December, and that his dismissal order was written that same day.

He adds that they faced difficulties with the registration process as well. On 26 December, the Public Service Hall asked for additional documentation which had not been required when other similar organisations applied to establish a trade union. Nonetheless, a few days later, Sopromadze and his colleagues submitted the necessary documents, only to be told that the issue had not been resolved yet.

‘We still don’t know the reason or what the issue is that hasn’t been addressed’, Sopromadze says.

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The loss of institutional memory

Besides the lack of clarity regarding the dismissals, one issue experts have noted regarding the supposed ‘revitalisation’ of the public sector is how the institutional memory of Georgia’s various government bodies will be affected.

According to Tkeshelashvili, she, along with 12 other individuals from the National Agency for Crime Prevention, Enforcement of Non-custodial Sentences and Probation, were all let go without any regard for their professionalism or qualifications. She says that such specialists are not easily replaceable, and that recruiting and retaining such professionals would require considerable time and resources.

‘When someone has been in the system for 15 years, you’d agree that, especially if their professional development has involved changes in positions and promotions, this person carries the institutional memory that others can benefit from’, Tkeshelashvili says.

The ruling Georgian Dream party initiated civil service reforms in 2015. According to Ana Papuashvili from the Social Justice Centre (SJC), a local rights group, the declared goal of the legislation was, and formally remains, to create a professional civil service which would ensure individuals’ qualifications and integrity.

She notes that when people work in the public sector for years, they develop skills, become familiar with the workings of the service, and possess institutional memory. According to her, this is particularly valuable when political leadership changes, as a stable civil service can assist the new leadership in effectively managing the country.

‘These individuals had strong legal guarantees, and it was difficult to dismiss them easily, ensuring the protection of not only the rights of civil servants but also the continuity of their knowledge, experience, and institutional memory within the civil service, which was beneficial for the country’, she says.

‘However, recent changes in legislation began to unravel when the middle management layer was directly connected to the political leadership […] It is already known in advance that state officials bring their own appointees as deputies, and these individuals should be their personal selections’, she notes.

Papuashvili said civil servants should never have been chosen this way, as it disrupts the stability and institutional memory of the civil service. This in turn makes it much more difficult to carry out long-term reforms, as well as the fact that such legislative changes erode citizens’ trust in the civil service as being politically neutral and based on professionalism and qualifications.

Most importantly, Papuashvili claims, when civil servants are replaced according to the political preferences of a specific party, including those they dislike, it creates risks and threats related to corruption.

‘When you are tied to political loyalty, it is clear that if someone desires, they might ask you to do things that are not in line with the law’, Papuashvili emphasises.

‘My country comes first, then my job’

The exact number of people dismissed from the public sector in recent weeks remains unclear. Both Tbilisi City Hall and the Ministry of Justice declined to speak to OC Media, referring to previous statements in which Kaladze stated that no one was being dismissed from their job due to political reasons or participation in protests.

Similarly, the National Agency for Crime Prevention, Enforcement of Non-Custodial Sentences, and Probation has labeled the reports of politically motivated dismissals of employees ‘disinformation’.

According to Sopromadze, as of 14 January, his yet-to-be formalised trade union is providing legal assistance to up to 80 people who were dismissed from public institutions due to their political views. Among the government institutions these people were previously employed at include the Ministry of Internal Affairs,  the Revenue Service, the Legal Aid Bureau, the Public Service Development Agency, the Government Administration, the Central Election Commission, and the Personal Data Protection Service.

Various non-governmental organisations are also supporting people who were dismissed from their jobs, including the SJC, which is handling six of the cases.

As Papuashvili explains, before the amendments to the public service law on 13 December, the heads of the primary structural units of public institutions and their deputies were professional public officials, whose dismissal during reorganisation was a complex process. Specifically, public institutions were obligated to find alternative positions for these people, either within the same institution or another agency.

However, following the new legislation, the heads of departments were transferred to administrative contracts, which simplified their dismissal. According to the law, they are now entitled to only one month’s salary as compensation upon dismissal.

Papuashvili emphasises that prior to these amendments, such individuals could have contested their dismissal in court and could have demanded they be reinstated to their position or an equivalent position.

‘Today, such guarantees no longer exist. They can still go to court, but according to the law, they cannot be reinstated to their position. The maximum compensation they can receive is three months’ salary’, she explains.

Despite the significant reduction in the legal guarantees for public officials at the local level, Nino Tkeshkelashvili and her colleagues at the Justice Ministry are planning to initiate legal action.

‘We definitely plan to pursue legal action. Clearly, it will first take place within the country, but if we cannot achieve anything here, we will continue the case at the international level’, Tkeshkelashvili says, emphasising that she and other civil servants will continue to fight for their rights.

In addition, despite losing their jobs, many of the public servants we spoke to insist they did not regret speaking out.

‘I didn’t give it much thought at the time, and I’ve never regretted it for a moment’, Tkeshelashvili says. ‘That’s the choice I made’.

Zurab Gegeshidze from the Public Registry agrees. ‘The future of Georgia is in Europe. We don’t want to live in Russia’, he says.

‘Of course, I expected problems after signing the petition, but for me, my country comes first, then my job and everything else.’