A number of employees of the GEM Fest electronic music festival are planning to sue the festival, after not being paid.
Forty-two employees worked for a month in several different positions during the festival, but were not paid after it finished, according to local media reports.
The festival, which is co-funded by the government, ran from 14 July to 14 August in Anaklia, a small seaside town in western Georgia.
After not being paid, employees gathered at the entrance of the venue to protest.
Local media outlet Livepress reported that the majority of the protesters were employed in the ticket sales department. Some were paid ₾100 ($40) instead of the ₾500 ($200) they were promised.
After protests from the employees and a number of labour rights groups, the employees were promised they would be compensated in mid-September. However, they say they will go to court. ‘These people violated the terms of the contract, so we cannot trust their words’, Netgazeti quoted one of the employees.
The Georgian Young Lawyers Association, a rights group assisting the employees, is to file a complaint against the festival on 18 August.
The festival has not responded to the claims.
However, on 10 August, GEM Fest founder Giorgi Sigua wrote that the festival ‘did not turn out to be financially successful’, because of ‘false expectations’, bad weather, and the death of a young woman on 3 August reportedly after taking recreational drugs.
A number of minor opposition parties and drug reform advocacy groups have directly accused Georgia’s authorities of blame for the reported poisoning of at least 10 people, with one dead at the GemFest music festival. They argue that the government’s strict drug laws meant that drug users do not know what substances they are taking, and are unable to verify them.
Twenty-two-year-old Natia Tavartkiladze died in hospital on 3 August, after falling ill at the GemFest music festival in the Black
A number of employees of the GEM Fest electronic music festival are planning to sue the festival, after not being paid. 
