Mtis Ambebi recently won the case in the Sagarejo district court against the Municipality Council and City Hall - for five months we have been requesting from the local government public information on how many thousands or hundreds of thousands of GEL have been spent on bonuses and allowances for officials since 2013. The government is unwilling to reveal the information. However, for the whole 10 years, the absence of kindergartens in the villages inhabited by ethnic Azerbaijanis was explained by the lack of sufficient funds in the local budget.
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There are 29 kindergartens in Sagarejo municipality. Almost every Georgian village has a preschool educational institution, except for the villages inhabited by ethnic Azerbaijanis, where 33% of the entire municipality's population lives (up to 17 thousand people).
Among those 9 villages inhabited by minorities, the only exception is Duzagrama, with the only kindergarten for up to 30 children.
The documents developed by the office of the State Minister for Reconciliation and Civic Equality emphasize that the most effective way to learn the state language is to start it from the preschool education level, but the state has done nothing to promote the Georgian language learning process for years.
32,183 ethnic Azerbaijanis live in the Kakheti region. More than 67% of them, 21 672 people do not know the state language
Similarly, the situation is critically unequal in the Kvemo Kartli region, where more than 5 thousand children are left without access to kindergartens.
Out of 57 villages of Dmanisi municipality, only seven have kindergartens. 65% of the population in the district are ethnic Azerbaijanis. There is no kindergarten in any of the villages inhabited by minorities.
Even in the Bolnisi district, out of 48 villages, there are only five kindergartens. 63% of the population are ethnic Azerbaijanis. There is no kindergarten in any of the villages inhabited by minorities.
Out of 43 villages of Tsalka municipality, there is a kindergarten in only six. About 53% of the population are ethnic minorities. 39% of them are Armenians, almost 7% are Azerbaijanis and the same number are Greeks. There is no kindergarten in any village inhabited by Armenians and Greeks. Pre-school education is available only in Kizil-Kilisa, the only village inhabited by Armenians.
The legislation expressly obliges local governments to provide preschool care and education for all children of appropriate age. The right to education is guaranteed by the Constitution.
On December 23, 2022, with the support of Mtis Ambebi, young people living in Keshalo, Kazlari, and Mughanlo addressed Sagarejo City Council with a petition and demanded accommodating kindergarten in the village of Lambalo and ensure its functioning. More than 300 children in Lambalo do not have access to preschool education. This is the first case of using the petition mechanism in the municipality of Sagarejo, however, the petition as an exercising form of citizen participation in self-government processes was defined by the Local Self-Government Code 7 years ago.
Sagarejo Municipality Council Bureau discussed the petition submitted on December 23 only today, grossly violating the deadline set by Article 86 of the Code, and sent it to the City Hall for consideration.
According to the internal regulations of the Sagarejo City Council, the relevant rules of the City Council session apply to the work of the Bureau session. By law, the session of the City Council is open and any person has the right to attend without prior permission. Despite this, the journalist of Mtis Ambebi and the representatives of the advocacy group were not allowed to attend the meeting of the Bureau session today.
At the entrance of the City Council and City Hall buildings Security police officers were mobilized. As they said they had an order from the chairman of the Sagarejo City Council, Aleksi Gilashvili, not to let journalists into the building of the City Council.
In order to react to the fact of unlawful interference with the journalists’ professional activities by security police officers, Mtis Ambebi contacted the Ministry of Internal Affairs (Public Security Management Center, number 112) 4 times within one hour. Each time the operators said that they had directed the message to the police department of Sagarejo. It takes a maximum of 2-3 minutes by car from the district police department to the City Hall building, but the law enforcement officers did not appear on location at all.
Mtis Ambebi will appliy to the Special Investigation Service with the request to initiate an investigation into the fact of unlawful interference with the journalist’s professional activities.
