Epress.am News from Armenia
If in the region of Samtskhe-Javakheti — in the cities of Akhalkalaki and Ninotsminda — the administration is made up of 95% Armenians, then in Akhaltsikhe (also in Samtskhe-Javakheti), where the ratio of Armenians to Georgians is 50-50, this proportion has not been kept: there are more Georgians than Armenians in the city’s administration, said Caucasus Institute for Peace, Democracy and Development (CIPDD) Project Coordinator Marina Elbakidze, speaking to an Epress.am correspondent in Tbilisi.
Despite the fact that the law dictates all documents and protocols be drawn up in the Georgian language, according to Elbakidze, no one actually does this.
“Minutes of meetings and workshops are written in Armenian, then translated into Georgian and sent to the center [Tbilisi]. The working language of the meetings is Armenian or Russia,” she said.
The local population, according to the conflict specialist, continues to complain that Armenians are underrepresented among customs officers and border guards along the Armenia-Georgia border.
“They are mostly Georgians, even Georgians from other regions; in order to fight corruption, they don’t take in local residents for work. Javakheti-Armenians are also underrepresented in law enforcement agencies, such as the police, although the chiefs of police in Akhalkalaki and Ninotsminda are Armenian,” she said.
As for complaints about unemployment, Elbakidze noted that the unemployment rate is high throughout Georgia.
“In this sense, Javakheti differs little from the other regions. In economic terms, this region is characterized by its poverty, but it is as poor as many other regions, and no poorer than, say, Guria [along the Black Sea coast],” she said.