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THIS PAPER HAS BEEN REALIZED IN

THE FRAMEWORK OF EUROPEAN VOL-

UNTARY SERVICE:

"EVS for Change".

The project has been founded by “Youth in

Action” Programme of European Union

Hosting Organization:

Caucasian House, Tbilisi, Georgia

Sending Organization:

Venti di Scambio, Conversano, Italy

With the support of:

AgenziaNazionale Giovani

Photos and text: Francesco Bagnardi

Cover photo: Tika Bobokhidze

Design: Tata Bobokhidze

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July 2014

First time I have been in Chiatura, it was end of spring. A couple of heavy rainy days preceded my

trip. Nature was green, Imereti was shining.

I knew about Chiatura, before to go there, that it was the Stalin’s ropeway city.

Colleagues’ stories, photo-reportages easy to find typing on Google the name of the city, and bored

selfie of acquaintances on social networks, sketched it as the rusty, creepy Stalin’s ropeway town,

ancient as the Soviet Union itself, poor and desolate, or “vintage” according to the points of view; in

any case, grey debris of a defeated and gone Industrial Dream.

Closed in the middle of plain rocky cliffs mountains, developed on the both side of Kvirila River it

seems to found itself in a place not perfectly suitable for big urban settlement. Chiatura lies on a

plateau, among 300 and 500 metres above the sea, expanding irregularly on different levels of the

mountains and along the banks of the river.

Chiatura was founded as an industrial city, after that in the second half of 1800, a German scien-

tist working for the Tsarist Empire’s Viceroy in Georgia, discovered huge deposits of high quality

manganese.

In 1876 Akaki Tsereteli, Georgian poet and writer, lead the first extraction of ore. The city grown

rapidly, the villages around populated the area where newly became miners, tasted the hard working

conditions in the mines. Extraction and transportation required investments and efforts, given also

the location of mineral and the sharpness of mountains.

In 1895, Chiatura was finally linked to the Black Sea’s shores with a railroad connecting the city to

the port of Poti.

Chiatura became a major producer of high quality manganese for more than one century.

At first as periphery of Tsarist Empire under control of French, British and German companies,

then as marginal Soviet wonderland, Georgia provided its decent portionof ore, reaching worldwide

relevant proportion of production.

Chiatura was the pulsing centre of the Caucasian, Asian and European production, providing the best

ore and the biggest quantity, despite the hostile morphology of mountains and canyons.

CHIATURA CITY OF CONFLICTS Born after mines, the city and the mineral shared an interwoven fate.

In 1921, after the short experience of first Georgian Independence, the extraction companies were

nationalized by Soviet authorities and in 1923 it started to work in the frame of Soviet planned

economy.

Between 1925 and 1928 the activity was leased again to an American company, the Averall Har-

riman’s.

The private management lasted until Soviet authorities re-took control of the extraction. Then, first

cable car for the ore was built.

The mines were up to the mountains, the processing plants and the railroads down on the level of

the city. In the middle, river and canyons, steep valleys slopes and sharp gorges.

A complicated system of ropeways and aerial tramways was implemented.

In 30s, first ropeways were built exclusively for the mineral.

In the 50s firsts civil aerial tramways were built to bring faster and easily the workers to the mines,

up to the mountains around the city and to let Chiaturians reach the peaks, as well, which started

to be more populated.

In the following years a complex of production was created.

A ferroalloys processing plant was built in the neighbourhood town of Zestaponi, connected to Chi-

atura with a railroad transporting ore. An hydro-power plant was created in nearby Vartsikhe, in order

to provide energy to the factories.

Zestaponi had a long-lasting ancient heritage, as old medieval town, preceding Cossacks, tsarists

and soviet industrialization dreams.

The Chiatura’s mines pulled Zestaponi in a new intensively industrial reality. Soon the area became

a cluster of extraction and processing. It grew prosperous while the communities abandoned partly

agriculture activities and devoted themselves to the industry.

The production complex reached its peak of production in 60s. Later on, it didn’t stop to expand

and develop.

The Soviet Industrial Dreams defeated green edges and high sharp crests. Engineers brought cable

cars flying on the angry Kvirila River, up to the pinnacles where stakhanovist workers went in the

bowels of mountains, pulling out black precious ore, every day for years.

In Zestaponi’s plant, train carriages brought mineral which was melted with other elements in

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infernally hot furnaces to produce alloys.

When Soviet Union collapsed the Chiatura-Zestaponi complex suffered years of inactivity.

Georgia underwent a fast pervasive deindustrialization. Its jewel of manganese and smoke, and

pioneering flying cars in the mountains, didn’t escape it.

The inactivity of the industries shut down the local spin off. Source of income disappeared and in the

meanwhile, Soviet social protection was falling down.

Chiatura in 1989 was around 30000 inhabitants. In 2008 ten thousands citizens had fled.

Likewise it happened in Zestaponi.

The market economy transition here had the taste of grey depression, getaway immigration and

rusty nostalgia.

Only after 2006, the cluster started to work again significantly. Rose Revolution, foreign investors and

big hopes started to dig ore and profitsout from the mountains.

Ropeways again useful now, had got rusty and scary. Workers kept using them, waiting for some

rehabilitation from the new private owner of mines and lands, which never happened.

In 2006 Georgian Manganese Ltd, branch company of an Ukrainian, American and Georgian Multi-

national Corporation, bought the 40-years leasing of the Chiatura-Zestaponi manganese extraction

and processing.

The production nowadays is far from the original scale. Ropeways need investment that nobody

provide, Kvirila got again black of manganese, the green forests share the landscape with the same,

old, crumbling, broken-windows plants.

In Chiatura life keeps going on. The ancient Tsereteli theatre, squares, monuments and colourful

mosaics are remembrances of glorious, even if opaque, past.

Winters are hard and muddy; summers are dry and hellish hot.

Kids go to schools, youngsters flee to Tbilisi or Rustavi, to study or find job, elders play domino,

work in their little land plots and drink chacha, while almost all the others are workforce for Georgian

Manganese.

On the half hour road between Chiatura and Zestaponi you can find the breath-taking Katsky monas-

tery on the precipitous rock pillar which keeps an eye on the mountains. A single hermit monk lives

there alone, coming down as less as possible through the only precarious ladder available.

Zestaponi has the railway station, the stadium and the football team. Monuments and roads are

covered by the fine dusts of ore and other minerals.

On the way back to Tbilisi I could not stop thinking to the places I had just been.

My mind was full of factories’ broken windows, black dust covering signalization, the face of lady

driving one of the cable car staring at me, the white smoke coming from Zestaponi plant, black banks

of Kvirila, rusty iron cables connecting mountain peaks and Soviet architecture stations, the police

man who gently didn’t allow me to take picture to one of the mine’s entrance up in the mountain,

the green, calm, bucolic landscapes of Imereti and its polluting, dirty, old industrial bomb perched

the middle of the wild cliffs.

At home I put order in the information collected: imagines and stories heard, some desk researches,

few insights, many thoughts and conflicting feelings.

The Stalin’s ropeway’s town, the city where West NGO workers, bored of Tbilisi, take selfie in the

collapsing “iron coffins”, complaining for the unsafety of the tramways but still having one run on tem,

just to try the feeling, under the indifferent eyes of tired, dirty workers.

Chiatura, the city of factories apparently dismissed and still working 24/7; the city of green shining

wonders and black ruins of building; the city of rust, dust, black river, poets and hermit monk.

It take half hour to the stranger, careless observer to have a look, understand, get morally offended,

give some solution receipts and run away.

Or it can take even less to understand there is something deeper, conflicting, contradictory, throbbing

and alive, and lots of voiceless stories to be told.

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Details on the way to Chiatura

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‘During the years of Saakashvili’s presidency, after Rose Revolution, things for business got better.

Businessmen enjoyed much better environment, but labour relations were terrible’ – told me Tamazi,

while driving his little jeep.

‘All the goods produced in this period were produced with the harassment and humiliations of work-

ers’– he adds.

Tamazi is the Chairman of Metallurgy, Mining and Chemical Worker’sTrade Union, which is part of

Georgian Trade Union Confederation (GTUC).

Tamazi is in his forties, has an austere face, an intense voice and a stable talkativeness. When he

stops speaking about Chiatura miners, he talks about capitalism and Soviet times, family stuffs and

old memories of his relatives who lived in Imereti.

I contacted Tamazi because I wanted to interview him. As chairperson of miners Trade Union, I

thought he could help me in understanding better dynamics in those plants that caught my attention.

He proposed to drive me in Chiatura and Zestaponi. He had some meetings with workers to hold

there. I accepted gladly for unexpected opportunity.

On the way, Tamazi drove and talked without pause, sharing information and old memories, answer-

ing clearly, without roundabouts, to my curious and copious questions, while green landscape of

Imereti was sliding over the car window.

‘To be member of Trade Union during Saakashvili period was not the easiest thing’- Tamaztells.

‘Now things are changing. Slowly but they are changing. Sure, changes are not still visible for all the

workers, but we are in a transition and soon outcomes will come.’

He is optimist.

Life is really getting better now for trade unionists. During previous government police was very strict,

often hostile with workers’ strikes and public demonstrations, careless about the legitimacy of strikes,

the peacefulness of their approaches or the good reasons of demonstrations. And apparently, it was

not rare to find policemen chasing you, or reporting you for artificial reasons, just because of your

WORKERS’ STRUGGLE AND LABOUR RIGHTS union’s activities. Harassment, discrimination, pressures and even dismissal could be the results of

too much unionism, too much claims defending labour rights.

‘At least now, when we go to strike, nobody beat us,’- Tamazi smiles –‘and this is the most visible

improvement since the government changed. We are in a transition toward a normal labour environ-

ment. We can organize trainings and activities without pressures. Institutional social dialogue started,

the labour code changed. If these are good changes, we do have them. We need time and to keep

working as we did’.

Trade Unions in Georgia has undergone a long, hard transformation. After collapse of Soviet Union,

the Shevardnadze era was a period of widespread corruption, which involved almost all the sectors

of daily life in the Country. Trade Unions were not out of those systematic rules of the game.

After 2005, the GTUC underwent a major change in leadership and approach. Rationalisation of

structures and a transformation in the paradigm of action, were pushed by the new staff. The old

soviet-minded structure, more interested in the protection of properties inherited in Soviet period, it

was transformed in a modern, social-market-economy trade union.

GTUC developed better links with international unions and institutions, such as International Labour

Organization, and started to raise the public legitimacy of its actions in the very same moment when

the hyper-liberal rhetoric of Rose Revolution aftermath, was biting stronger the workers movement.

Nowadays unionization in Georgia is still low because of high rate of unemployment and self-em-

ployment, and because of high presence of competitor trade unions backed by employers. However,

the support of public opinion to the independent union’s activity is growing, making the trade union

an autonomous and essential pillar of the active Georgian civil society.

‘During Shevardnadze life was grey. As worker, I don’t want really to talk about that’- says Tamazi

with an half-ironic and half-bitter smirk.

‘I remember I was working in Rustavi’s chemical plant. My salary was paid in carrots and cucumbers.

It was very hard time.’

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With Rose Revolution, new political elite undertook a deep and successful fight to corruption. The

perimeter of State’s action was dramatically reduced.

In order to avoid risk of bribery, almost all the public agencies were shut down. Food safety inspec-

tion agency and others as well, were abolished; laws on licences and tax were simplified in an

exceptionally business friendly new environment.

Really ‘things for businessmen got better’, as Tamazi explained. In the same period, huge process

of privatization of State properties began.

Often with opaque blurred procedures, old inefficient public companies were sold.

Foreigner and local investments skyrocketed, private sector economy grew while public action was

retreating; GDP reached high rates for consecutive years, Georgia was praised by World Bank as

best reformer and heads of friend-States named the country a beacon of freedom and democracy.

Old Soviet Labour Code still in force at that time, was abolished in 2006.

The new Code was the triumph of neo-liberalism. Employers enjoyed wide liberties and flexibility,

while employees received few rights and ineffective protections.

A feeble and inadequate anti-discriminatory legislation, oral employment contracts and free hiring-

firing rules were the novelties of the new liberal deal in the country.

Government retreated from labour market and employment contractual relations, and when pos-

sible, it established all the perfect conditions to attract foreign investors, carelessly with the quality

of these investments.

International Labour Organization, Council of Europe and European Union several times claimed for

more balanced approach in labour issues, but Georgian elites kept following the hyper-liberal stream

as strategy for development.

At that same time, Labour Inspection Agency, a public body with the task to monitor the compliance

of companies with the law and contracts, was abolished for corruption.

‘It was certainly corrupted,’- Tamazi admits, -‘and nobody could challenge it. I remember many of

those inspectors dining in restaurants with employers whom they were supposed to check. But I also

remember corrupted police in that time. And government didn’t abolish police. They reformed it. They

could reform the Labour Inspectorate as well, and make it work.’

The lack of a public agency monitoring the respect of the labour law was one of the main reason

why the few workers rights, established by the new code, remained sadly only on the papers of

lawmakers’ offices’ shelves. Nobody could check if employment relations were fair and lawful while

union’s members were often discriminated, their activities were obstructed, often dismissals had the

reason of avoiding disturbing union’s representatives in the workplace, even when the employer was

a public company.

Yellow trade unions, financed and supported by the employers, proliferated, while the government

approach was bashful obsequious, in order to do not scare foreign investors.

Chiatura mines and industrial tramways, together with the ferro-alloys processing plant of Zestaponi

and the hydropower plant of Vartsikhe which provides the cluster with energy, was sold to Georgian

Manganese LLC, a British Stemcor affiliate company, in 2006.

In the following years the property of the industrial cluster changed. Nowadays the owner of the com-

plex Chiatura-Zestaponi-Vartsikhe is still Georgian Manganese but it became property of Georgian

American Alloys, an Ukrainian-American multinational corporation headquartered in Florida.

First attempt to privatize the factories occurred during Shevardnadze period, but only in 2006, after

many opaque failed tenders and empty auctions, the privatization succeeded.

In the office of Trade Union in Chiatura, Tamazi holds a meeting with an handful of workers.

Union’s activity is hard in Chiatura. Workers officially members of GTUC are just little proportion of

total workers.

Workers of Georgian Manganese here work in the extraction, in the management of cable cars, in

control of air system, in the plants that wash the mineral, and in the transportation of minerals to

Zestaponi.

Around 3500 workers are employed. Rarely they can aggregate and talk each other about their

problems at the workplace.

Organizing them is difficult, Tamazi explained me. Some of them fear the employer’s reaction if they

will become members of GTUC, others are member of trade unions backed by employer, others

simply don’t see the reason to become members.

In Chiatura there has been strikes, especially after the change of government, when less repression

and many hopes pervaded the Country.

The results were scarce.

In themines and plants, workers still complain low salaries and insufficient work safety. There are

no collective agreement and ownership seems not intentioned in starting a collective bargaining with

independent trade union.

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‘My salary is too low. I earn 70 lari per month and often I have to buy with my own money, pieces

that I need to make the cable car console works’- tells Dato who work for GM in one of the tramway

lines which bring the mineral from mountain peak to the plant.

‘And they never allow me to take any free day and vacation, because they can’t find a substitute who

will take my place’- he continues.

The law recognize worker’ right to 10 paid leaves per year. For Dato the right is just on paper.

Nana works in air ventilation system. She is responsible for the lives of workers inside the mountains.

She has voice almost broken from crying.

‘We are four in the work shift. We work in turn’- she explains to Tamazi, trying to control her sobbing.

‘Now one colleague went in vacation. I asked for information and one of supervisor said that, we

three remaining women, will cover the one who will not work. I already work so long time that I can’t

take care of my children’.

The old and new labour codes are both unclear in dealing with overtime work, and situation as Nana

faces, are regularly happening in Georgia. She fears to be fired, she will work overtime and without

salary even, if she will have to.

Tamazi try to calm the workers down. There is anger and resignation.

Workers in Chiatura don’t receive anymore pay slips where to find all details of monthsalary.

They were obliged to open a bank account where the salary is directly transferred by employer. Now

they receive a message on mobile, with written the amount of money received.

No other explanation are available. Even asking to the ownership will be time-consuming and prob-

ably useless.

‘They pay us according to the quota of production that they establish. Sometimes I receive less

money than the month before and if I ask why, they will tell me that I received money according to

the production quota I reached. But we don’t have proper instrument to work. It is normal we can’t

reach quotas they fix’- Giorgi explains.

He works with trains which bring the mineral out from the mines.

Trains are old and rusty, the same used in the 60s. Giorgi feels unsafe there. Often break doesn’t

work properly. Electric cables in the locomotive are unsafely exposed without protection, the engines

are coughing and often, difficulty they start moving. All the working infrastructures in the mines has

not been renovated since ages. The new property apparently didn’t invest in technologies. Work-

ers complain for scarce safety, for broken, old working equipment, for low salary and no free days,

even if unpaid.

Moreover, workers in general pay from their salaries services for food and transportation.

Meals provided are poor and during religious fast period, the meals don’t change. Religious work-

ers can’t then eat milk or meat products but still they can’t avoid to pay for this service: money are

directly deducted from their salary.

The same happens for transportation services, as a system of taxies and minibuses that often don’t

work, but still are paid by salary’s deductions.

There are injured and dead workers in Chiatura. There have been strikes, even massive and endur-

ing, there have been meeting with ownership, promises usually not kept.

‘After the strike it seems things are getting worse,’- Givi says.

‘They just want to punish us’- he complains.

Givi has white, fluffy hair. He works in the mines with explosives. He complains about the low salary.

Tamazi advice documents to write down, petitions to organize, letters to send to authorities.

Strike is not in the close future plans. Workers are tired of fighting. Things are stuck in a never-

ending snap-shot. It doesn’t matter who is the owner, who the government, how long the strike lasts.

Later on, I have opportunity to visit one of the plants perched on a dizzy cliff of mountain, on the

bank of the Kvirila.

Zurab, worker of the plant and local representative of GTUC, guides me.

We visit the building, walk shaky, rusty stairs, visit the levels of the plant were the manganese arrives

with cable car and it is washed with Kvirila’s water, by careful workers.

Noise of motors in action make it difficult to talk. We just go and go. I take pictures, meet black-

manganese-dirty-face of workers gifting me a smile while working. They know Zurab, greet him with

friendly glimpses and keep doing their stuffs.

Imagines are more effective than words. Stories I heard could not really explain the noise, the

licking roofs, the rusty walls, the electric cables hanging without protection in wet rooms. Broken

windows open the view to the familiar green landscape and mountains of black mineral as frequent

adornment.

Water is everywhere; dangerous holes are on the floor, making harder the daily work.

Broken windows, wet mineral and insufficient uniforms make the winter hardest for the workers which

stay hours in the cold, with wet clothes while working.

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In few minutes one man stares at me with inquiring, wicked eyes. He chased us while we were go-

ing up the stairs. Now, he makes some gestures, points my camera. Zurab talks with him. I hide my

memory card somewhere in the pocket.

We have to go down and then out from the plant.

‘This is private property’- the guardian man says to me in a broken English. He looks angry but

plays calmly.

I regret to have taken too few pics.

I have still in the eyes the broken windows and the poor light bulbs hanged in dark rooms, the sharp

faces of workers dirty with mineral, their red eyes, their improper uniform, their calm, surprisingly

gentle smiles.

Zestaponi Trade Union’s office is just in front the factory. From the window, you can see the train

carrying manganese to the factory in regular intervals of time.

The office is in a crumbling building owned by Georgian Manganese.

According to the law, employer must provide spaces for trade union’s activity.

8 months after the collective agreement, finally, GM fulfilled the point of agreement providing that

space to the Union.

‘In the beginning there was nothing here’- Erekle explains me. He is one of the local Union repre-

sentatives.

‘In the beginning here there were not even doors. Slowly we fixed everything; we put computers,

tables and chairs, some other furniture. Now it is perfect for us’-, he smiles.

The furniture is poor and simple.

One of the three rooms was still empty when I was there, with only two old tables standing in the

corner, and two big windows on the side of plant.

From there I saw the big smokestacks of the furnaces, with white and black, massive, spooky smoke

and the rusty train of mineral, carrying inside the black burden. Over the walls around the plant, big

crossroads of metal infrastructure and nothing else was visible. In Zestaponi, as Tamazi told me,

workers are better organized.

Of 2300 workers, only 400 are members of GTUC, nevertheless, their activity is effective.

Few months before I met them, after their umpteen strike, they obtain a written collective agreement,

which is anyway still in its biggest part, not fulfilled by the ownership.

The majority of workers of the factory are members of other Unions, created with the support of

employer.

‘In 2008 the administration gathered us and offered us to be part of the Trade Union they backed’,

Erekle explains.

Several workers accepted it.

‘To be part of yellow trade union has some little advantages. For example, administration is more

flexible if you make mistakes of little importance. You will not be punished for little delays at work

and in addition, almost all the supervisors are members’- Tamazi adds.

But other workers of GTUC wanted to be independent from the employer, and then in the same year

they created the local branch of GTUC metallurgy and mine’s workers Union.

They received pressure from employer.

‘Why do you want another union? Ownership was repeatedly asking us. They were saying that there

was already an Union for workers, and we could just join it. We didn’t need to make another union

here, according to employer’ - Erekle explains - ‘but with help of international institution we managed

to create the union. Since then, we work for workers’ rights’.

In the room with chairs and long conference table, I was surrounded by unionized workers. They told

me that, often other union’s members join them during the strikes and protests, but they keep their

membership in the yellow union.

‘We are in this Union because we want to do something. We don’t want to wait the employer to gift

us anything, but just to see our rights respected’- one of them says, while others nod with thoughtful

expressions.

‘They get gadgets and travel cards in yellow trade unions. These unions are richer because they

have more members. But then, when it is time to stand up for something, workers come to us’- one

of the workers says with a confidential smile. Others as answer, smile too.

So, workers in Zestaponi reached a collective agreement. Their strikes brought more than just

promises, as in Chiatura. Nevertheless, they still have to struggle for the fulfilment of every point of

the contract.

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Equipment is old, out of date. Quotas of production are established and workers cannot, usually,

manage to reach them mostly because of improper equipment. Administration then threat workers

to reduce salaries.

Overtime work must be paid with an increased rate than in the normal working hours. This point

is still not fulfilled, despite it is in the collective agreement, and now in the Labour Code, as well.

Workers have right to 10 paid leaves, and 10 additional in case of heavy and hazardous job.

Workers in Zestaponi are in this category and nonetheless, employer doesn’t respect the obligation.

Train which bring mineral from Chiatura is another old, collapsing, soviet-time memory.

‘Oil leaks in the cabin and the structure is crumbling. It can collapse in every minute and we reported

to the ownership that it is dangerous. But nothing happened and we still work with it’- one of the

worker explains.

Old equipment are the biggest reasons of accidents at work. And in Zestaponi, serious accident,

often causing the death of workers occurred.

Last one on the 3rd of June, when a 50 years old electrical engineer died working with high voltage

line.

‘Dust is so much that visibility is reduced in the plant. Who works in the upper level can’t see what

is happening downstairs. Moreover, more than 90% of equipment is out of date. It can’t be used

according to the rules. It is unsafe. That’s why accidents occurs’ - Erekle explains.

‘We have to struggle for every point of our agreement, asking for fulfilment. Luckily we don’t have to

go on the street and shout when we have a dispute and we want to talk with the ownership. Now they

reply to our request and we often have meeting with administration’- he continues.

‘But still approach didn’t change so much. For example one of our biggest problem is the water;’-

Ereklekeps telling, -‘tap water on the plant is brown and smelly. We ordered a scientific inspection,

which said water is not drinkable, because harmful and dangerous. Ownership commissioned an-

other inspection saying that our results were wrong’.

The issue of water in Zestaponi it is still not solved. Inspections followed inspections for months. The

situation is still same in the moment I’m writing, with workers threating to strike and ownership keep

saying that the smelly, brown water is perfectly drinkable.

According to some workers, they had been “punished” because of their successful strike, which

brought to the collective agreement. And same agreement didn’t bring relevant improvement

in their working life.

For others, as Tamazi and Erekle, the collective bargaining and then the contract is a legal starting

point, which is difficult to be implemented because of lack of public monitoring.

We need an inspection body which monitor the compliance of employers with code. Georgia is the

only country in the world I think, which doesn’t have it’- Erekle explains.

‘Without it every time something happen in the plant we have to start a trial for every single issue,

and we have to wait always that something bad happens. There is no systematic mechanism for

enforcement of obligation established by laws and contracts. Then it doesn’t matter if the law protect

you or not. Nobody check it anyway’- he concludes.

Zestaponi workers need proper uniforms. They work with minerals in high temperature. They melt

rocks and dust to make alloys.

Their uniforms are old and destroyed, or have improper sizes.

‘The administration told us that the ship with our uniforms just left the port and it was going to arrive.

They said it in January 2006 if I’m not wrong;’- Levan says, hiding a big smile under the huge, thick

and dark moustache, -‘probably some pirates kidnapped the ship and we are still waiting’ - he jokes,

while the colleagues laugh, relieved from the tension of heavy discussion.

If the more active trade unionists are optimist that soon changes in legislation and governmental

approach will reflect on workers situation, resignation is spread, in the eyes of workers I talk with.

Tamazi told me that new government is open to social dialogue. The Tripartite Partnership Com-

mission where government, unions and employers meet to discuss labour issues has been institu-

tionalized by the new labour code. They are discussing to re-establish, finally, the labour inspection

agency.

He explained me that a totally new approach has been undertook and that government

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following suggestion of ILO as never happened before. The new code has improved situation of

workers’ rights, it has established a mediation role for the government which takes in account the

position of trade union.

Nevertheless, visible changes in the daily life of workers are not visible yet.

And in Zestaponi, they looked hopeless and angry.

Not even the collective agreement, reached with many efforts and struggle, brought really relevant

improvement. The same old situation, to which they seems to be accustomed, remained: no vaca-

tion, no extra remuneration for extra work, no drinkable water at work, fine dusts deep inside the

lungs and all around, creepy crumbling equipment in the middle of low visibility steaming, dangerous

areas.

‘The biggest offence of all this system is to our health’ – one of them told me with redden, swollen

and tired eyes.

‘Even if we strike and we win an increase of our salary, costs of medical treatment are taking almost

all the money. And anyway nobody can give usour health back’- he concluded.

Fine dusts of mineral are badly toxic for workers as well as for who lives close to the plant.

‘In 2005 Zestaponi was working on 50% of its potential scale. Workers with oncological problems

under medical treatments were 600. In 2011 the factory was working almost on 100% of its potential

and more than 1000 workers suffered oncological and respiratory problems’- Erekle explains, telling

by heart numbers that he sadly remember well.

In spite of everything, workers are still ready for another strike, if the point of collective agreement

will not be fulfilled in the future.

‘The truth is that here there is no alternative. We have to work here, and to make this work become

decent’- one says.

‘We almost have to strike every years. One year almost passed since the last one. We will have

soon to do it again’- another jokes.

On the other hand, others lookreally hopeless. Some of them suffer lack of solidarity during the

strikes. Others think the company will never invest in the plant to make it safer and less polluting,

unless they will not be forced to do so. And the government seems to be not enough strong or

intentioned. Some workers are sure that ownership will not improve the production sites on its own

initiative.

‘This plant has no perspective for the future. The ownership will not invest here. It will maximize the

profits with the minimum investment’- in this way, one of them frankly told me his opinion.

On the way back to Tbilisi, Tamazi kept sharing information and telling stories.

‘3500 people are employed in Chiatura mines. They received overall around 2 million 500 thousands

lari, to say roughly, per month’- he counted.

‘This is a capital spent in Chiatura in restaurants, local markets, shops and so on. So all those

activities are completely dependent whether Georgian Manganese will pay regularly the salaries or

not’- he concluded.

A feeling of resignation sadness then took me. Cities and villages shared their fate with the factories.

If factories stop working, cities stop living as well. Workers pay an high price for their survival to the

profit of the foreign investor.

‘I’m not a soviet nostalgic’- Tamazi interrupts my thoughtful silence - ‘but in Soviet time, lives of these

workers were more human. All the value added from work made in Chiatura was spent in social

project in the same Chiatura. Resources were spent in recreationalafter work activities for workers, or

in planting trees. Miner was respected person with good salary and good status in society. He could

enjoyed special social program as vacations, free housing and so on. But now look what happens:

they have 500 lari as salary, the other benefit go in the pocket of the foreigner owner guy and the

nature is destroyed’.

Tamazi kept talking, unconsciously filling the sense of emptiness I was feeling because of so sense-

less contradictions. Workers with no other alternative go to work where they face often indecent

treatment, in unsafe condition, paying with their health their loyal work willingness.

Slowly they get sick, with lungs full of toxic mineral which pollutes their nature and their river, but

which is the only mean to go ahead, in a systematic unequal relation where workers pay heavily their

lack of choice, and resistant people, with tired, hopeful smiles, keep struggling silently for dignity.

On the way, Tamazi offered me a tasty, big Georgian dinner, in perfect Georgian hospitality style.

In Chiatura conflict is evident. Parties has different interests, surely incompatible.

In one fast toast with the austere, talkative trade unionist, I had already decided the part I belonged

to.

15

16

Black water of Kvirila River

I met Shota in the main square of Chiatura in front of Municipality building. He took me in his NGO

office, but first he showed me little plants he planted in the dry, empty flowerbeds of the square full

of parked cars.

Shota run an NGO in Chiatura, with some other friends and activists. They deal with environmental

issues.

He is around 50, with smiling face, white hair and cheerful big moustache.

‘They will grow strong, will give bit of colour to this grey square’- he mentions with a smile, pointing

the plants, while leading me to the office.

I was again in Chiatura, in a boiling, gusty day of summer; dry, hot wind was blowing strong and

dust flying everywhere.

Shota is involved in environmental activism since ages. He was a kind of dissident during Soviet

period, never in the liking of local authorities.

During Saakhashvili he kept his activities and founded the organization.

‘We were not scared of repression, but people were’- he explains.

‘In 2011 we organized our first meetings. People attending were very few. They supported us but

they were scared of authority’s reaction. Moreover, majority of people here work in the mines or

in the plants of manganese, or in their spin-off activities. They feared for their jobs’- he describes.

He offers some fresh water and some coke while we are in the office; a long round table, a computer

and a projector pointing the wall as furniture.

Saakashvili’s period was not the best for oppositions and critics in every field. Workers and activists

shared this same feeling wherever I meet them.

Still Shota worked hard with an handful of friends in that period, managing to collect little moral

capital of activisms, implementing projects and working to create awareness about environmental

problems in the area.

‘We are an NGO, we don’t care which the political party to the government is. We work for citizens

and environment;’- he tells, - ‘but after election, with new government we received more attention.

Municipality backed us, media gave us lots of attention and visibility, and representatives of the

government came to see the situation with their eyes’.

Shota and other activists create video-reportages and organize meeting and conferences.

PRODUCTION, PROFITS AND ENVIRONMENTAL CATASTROPHE They collect petitions, create surveys, write letters to the authorities.

‘One of our main problem since years here is the water’- he tells.

His voice is calm. He often and chaotically, changes argument and topics while speaking, filling me

with information.

I write down notes, trying to order my ideas.

‘Water system in Chiatura is rusty and patched’- he explains. ‘Tap water is often brown and has

bad smell’.

All the water pipes in Chiatura, as Shota explained, are old and full of holes. Cleaning filter system

are damaged or inexistent, and nobody provided correct maintenance for years. Still nowadays,

nobody does it. That’s why the water drainage system contribute to the low quality of water.

‘When we start our NGO’s activity, at first we collected opinion of citizens with a survey’- Shota

describes.

‘The 0% of citizens was satisfied with the quality of water supply. Then we commissioned a sanitary

inspection which found that water was full of heavy metals and was dangerous and not drinkable.

We collected signatures for a petition and we recorded videos to show how bad the tap water was’.

While Shota speaks, a young member of the NGO, with laptop and video-projector, shows me videos

they realized and posted on social networks.

‘After this campaign we got attention of helpful foreigner donors. We wrote down a project and in 2

years we will be able to renovate all the water pipes in the area and to install centralized monitoring

control, with a reservoir as well’-Shota continues.

Despite the foreign donors, the environmental problem in Chiatura will not be solved just with new

drainage system.

‘What we really need are efficient cleaning filters’- Shota argues.

‘When we will have changed all the old pipes, the water will not be polluted by the pipes anymore,

but still there are other sources of water pollution’- he tells.

‘Georgian Manganese pollutes the river, the underground springs and of course the air’- he says

openly - ‘and they have no intention to change their way of working’.

‘They wash the manganese with water from Kvirila and drain the dirty water directly in the river again;

they dig manganese from mountains in open quarries that they don’t refill, leaving them empty. Noth-

ing grow up on these areas after the extraction.

18

They leave desert behind them. Open quarries pollute the underground springs as well, with the

leftovers of mineral, they deforest cliffs, transport toxic mineral with open trucks in the centres of

our cities and they store it in the open air, from where the wind brings it in our lungs, covering our

windows and vegetables in our land plots’- Shota lists rapidly and confident.

‘We detected the pollution in the air with several experts in last years’, - he adds - ‘and results are

impressive. In some villages, the level of fine dusts detected in the air was more than 200 times

bigger than the safe thresholds. Some of the measurements were taken in place where churches or

schools are. The level of fine harmful dusts were still dramatically higher than what is acceptable’ -

he explains me agitated.

‘To communicate with Georgian Manganese is very hard’- he continues.

I have in mind the workers of mines, still waiting for uniform and other un-kept promises.

‘They promised investments and launched a kind of social initiative they called “Green Year”. But

they didn’t do anything,’- he goes on – ‘ and when we started a project for the restoration of soil, they

did everything to make our work more difficult’.

‘We decided to restore some areas where the manganese has been extracted already or where

there is no mineral at all. We got the financing and volunteers. We wanted to bring new fertile soil

and plant trees’- he explains better.

‘But half of the area in Chiatura and nearby is Georgian Manganese’ property. Then we had to ask

them permission to plants trees, even where there is no manganese. We already had fertilizers and

resources and we had to wait for their acceptance. They tried to hinder us, and we wanted just to

plants trees’- he keeps explaining furious.

According to Shota, biggest part of the eco-problems of the area came because of lack of regulation.

‘We are not contrary to the extraction of manganese,’- he tells me -’we just know that it can be done

with much less impact on the eco-system’.

He told me that when the industrial complex of Chiatura-Zestaponi-Vartsikhe was privatized and sold

to Chiatura Manganese, a memorandum signed with the government discharged the company from

responsibility for pollution in the extraction and processing activities, for a certain period.

As the 2014 report ‘Hidden Cost of Privatization’, released by the NGO Association Green Alterna-

tive confirms, the wave of privatization undertook after Rose Revolution has opaque and unclear

aspects. Those factories considered ‘big polluters’ because of the nature of their production and their

impact on environment have been privatized through contract that practically exempted buyers from

pollution responsibility. The government vastly used contracts where the buyer was exempted from

responsibility to clean or redress the effect of ‘historical pollution’, that is to say, the pollution caused

in the period before the acquisition. Nevertheless, no studies were undertaken in order to measure

the extent of historical pollution. In this way the buyer, even years after the acquisition of the factory,

could claim that the level of current pollution was not in its responsibility because it was effect of

“past pollution”.

As written in the report of Association Green Alternative:

“As a result of wrong practice established in Georgia, we face the situation where no one (neither the

state, not the owners of the privatized enterprises) undertakes a commitment to redress and com-

pensate the damage caused by the factories to the environment prior to privatization. Such practice

causes other problems as well, due to the fact that damage and pollution are not evaluated prior to

privatization, the owner of already privatized enterprise is given a possibility to ascribe “the current

pollution” to the “past pollution” and thus escape the commitment imposed by the legislation to avoid,

decrease or moderate “current pollution””.

In addition to this, an ineffective and unsystematic monitoring and control procedure of compliance

of factories with environmental protection legislation, establish perfect conditions where companies

creating gross, widespread pollution, never pay for the damages they cause.

‘Our Constitution establishes that every citizen has right to live in an healthy safe environment’-

Shota tells me in the end of our interview.

‘We can say then, that those factories are unconstitutional’- he jokes with a bitter smile.

Shota, a jovial dissident with sandals and cheerful moustache, planting trees in the square of the

city, chaotic and honest man, keeps gathering the forces of resistant citizens who didn’t give up to

the tyranny of the idea that things around can’t ever get better.

Before I went we had lunch and drinked one glass of red wine. He made a toast saying that the

profession of journalist shall be at the service of the truth and he wished me to manage in this hard

commitment.

19

I smiled, thanked him and swallowed the wine thinking to the big, hard promise of that toast.

Before to go back home I met Keti.

In Tbilisi I had contacted his professor to talk with him about the effect of extraction of manganese

on the soil and eco-system of Chiatura and Zestaponi.

He gave me the number of Keti, one of his students who was writing her thesis on this topic.

When I called her, she was going out of Tbilisi, luckily in Chiatura. We arranged a meeting. We met

in front of municipality’s building’ square, reached a bench under the shadow of a couple of trees,

and started to talk.

Keti is studying for master degree in soil geography in one of the Tbilisi’s university, but she is from

Chiatura, and when she can, she likes to come back in the place where relatives are.

Keti explained me reasons and size of pollution in Chiatura, with the systematic way of talking of

a scientist.

She gave order to information that also Shota passed me in the anarchic interview we had had

before.

Georgian Manganese pollutes water and air. The river Kvirila is polluted because GM washes the

manganese and drain the dirty water directly back in the river, without any filtration process.

‘During Soviet time, this dirty ‘technical water’ was drained in a special reservoir and filtered before

to return in the river’- Keti explained me.

The river contain quantity of manganese and other heavy metals much higher than the heath-

acceptable threshold. As she explained, the river goes in Zestaponi where water is used in plant and

again returns to the river without cleaning process.

Kvirila flows then into bigger Rioni river which flow directly into the Black Sea.

For kilometres banks are polluted. The soil absorbs the manganese, and it becomes polluted as

well. Its capability to work as natural filter for the dirty water is reduced and the effect of pollution

with the time increases.

Kvirila water is used by farmers for irrigation of their fields. Livestock eats full-of-manganese grass

on its banks, wet by its water. Pollution poisons animals and vegetables, and then in humans who

certainly feed themselves with those products.

Open quarries shall be covered and flattened after the extraction of mineral. The big holes in the

mountains pollute in different ways. Leftovers of manganese stays there. With wind, they fly on the

villages, with rain and snow they penetrate in the soil and pollute the underground springs of water,

which are then given to the citizens of nearby villages.

Moreover, because Georgian Manganese doesn’t re-fill the quarries, on these areas it is then impos-

sible to create new plantation or wood. Deforestation of the mountains results often in landslides.

Air is full of manganese in the area of Chiatura. Tramways transport mineral passing just above the

city. Wind brings the fine dusts everywhere. Mountains of mineral is stored in the open air, without

cover. Train and trucks move the mineral around the cities and villages, leaving dusts behind them.

Fine dusts create tumours and respiratory diseases. Higher percentage of those diseases, compared

with other parts of the country, are found of course, in the areas of Chiatura and Zestaponi.

Keti tells me that time is running out before eco-disaster in Chiatura will get everlasting and unsolv-

able.

‘The soil is getting eroded, useless and barren’- she argues.

And the area is getting more and more dependent on the manganese, I add, thinking silently. Every

other possible sources of income are destroyed by the mineral.

There is no opportunity for tourism because of pollution and no opportunity for flourishing agriculture

because of the same reason.

‘When in the 90s the factories stopped working and mineral was not extracted, Kvirila river got

again transparent,’- Keti mentions - but it was not a good period because there are not so many

other sources of income here. That’s why there was a spread joke saying that from the colour

of river’s water you could guess if Chiaturians were working or not. If the river was clean, it was

bad news for us because it meant nobody was working’- she says with smiling, smart eyes.

In the end of the interview, Keti revealed me that all the youngsters are escaping from Chiatura.

‘They go to Tbilisi or Rustavi, they study or work there and rarely come back. But I like here. These

are still my places’- she admits.

‘When I say to my mates in Tbilisi that I’m going back in Chiatura when I don’t have lessons or other

business, they are surprised and ask me why I’m coming here so often. And I don’t know what to

answer. I just love here. This is the place where I grown up’.

20

WHO CAN COUNT THE SAND IN OCEANS?

In one of his poem, Tsereteli, the writer and founder of Chiatura, asks:

“Who can count the sand in oceans,

Or the stars in skies at night?

Who can praise the sons of Georgia

Men who fought for Georgia's right?”

He celebrates the kingdom of minerals, the richness of soils.

It seems he is asking how much it counts the right to pollute the river, poison the air, kills the forests

on the cliffs.

Gorges and peaks of Chiatura preceded him and his poems, as well as Soviets. Mountains resisted

them, still standing straight. Green is still alive there, above the offences of men.

The last ones suffer the blackmail of exploiting system.

Slowly they lose life in order to live.

The struggle of these mountains and canyons is the struggles of the voicelesses.

Likewise they protect beauty, defend dignity, outgrowth life.

Likewise they resist the miserable extortion of a blind system.

The poem continues:

“Gone is all that former glory

Relics of it ever glow

In the colours of the rainbow,

Pouring light on us below.

A symbol chaste of Kingdoms seven,

Shining forth in colours bright,

Whispering: Georgia still is sleeping

For it waits the dawn of light”.

Until the investor and the last one among the workers will not share same amount of dignity, and the

water of Kvirila will not be blue again, the struggle of the last ones is in the evidence of things, and

the dawn of light will be waited,yet.

22

23

Factories precede and announce the

city much before arriving to the cen-

tre. Broken windows, crumbling build-

ings and rust are the ordinary char-

acteristics of plants, not only those

working with manganese.

24

26

Dogs resting in the yard of one plant

on the way to Chiatura.

27

28

More views from the yard of one fac-

tory nearby the city.

29

The closer city centre is, the bigger

is the intensity of production and pol-

lution.

31

32

Kvirila River is highly polluted be-

cause of factories’ activities just on its

banks.

33

Cable cars bringing manganese from

the mountain’s peaks to the factories

on the river. Safety net built for pieces

of manganese possibly falling, is rusty

and worn-out. First houses of Chiatu-

ra are just below the tramway.

35

36

Buildings of factories where manga-

nese is washed are in ruins but still

working.

38

39

40

View from one of the manganese pro-

cessing factory.

41

Dark corridors with bad light, broken windows, holes on the floor, water licking

from the roof, rusty, collapsing stairs and manganese muddy dust everywhere.

This is what workers have to face everyday.

44

46

Kvirila River goes through Chiatura and then it flows in Zestaponi. Plants use Kvirila to wash the manganese and then drain dirty water again in the river, without

any filtration.

47

48

Unique system of ropeways was built

in Chiatura in 1950s to bring workers

up to the mountains where mines and

quarries are.

49

As well as factories, ropeways are old and rusty but still working. No mainte-

nance work has been implemented since years, but cable cars are used every

day. Workers, citizens of Chiatura and few tourists keep using them to reach

the peaks.

50

Inside of the cable car.

52

Inside view of ropeway’s station, up in

the mountain’s peak.

53

54

55

Details of ropeway’s station, in the peak.

56

57

58

A square with religious symbol on the

peak. The city expanded up in the

mountains thanks to the aerial tram-

ways.

59

60

62

Views and details from a cable car.

63

64

65

Another plant for the processing of

manganese. After the washing proce-

dure, the mineral is sent in Zestaponi

through railway which connects the

two cities.

67

A big building on the dizzy cliff of

mountain (on the left) and a view

of other houses near plants (on the

right). Washed clothes are hanging on

the balcony, while black polluting fac-

tory is few tens of metres behind, very

close to the city centre.

70

On the road to Chiatura, a little mon-

astery is perched on the cliff. Down a

little scrapheap of tyres. On the left, in

the symbol, just before the city cen-

tre, is written the name of the city, in

Georgian and Russian.

71

Miner waiting for the cable car, which

will bring him up to the mountain

where the mines are.

Rusty details inside one of the cable cars.

75

76

78

Views of Kvirila from cable car above it. The river is dirty and black of manganese. At first sight, it looks made of dense oil.

80

Details from another ropeway station on the peak. Once those stations were the

pride of Soviet engineering talent. Now they need investment and maintenance.

81

82

83

84

85

Views of Chiatura from the mountain.

86

87

88

Mountains peak around the city are still densely populated. People use ropeways several times a day, to get to the centre or in the closest shop.

89

90

The breath-taking monastery on the

Katsky Pillar where an hermit monk

still lives (on the left). On the right, a

statue with around buildings, just out

from Chiatura, on the way to Zestapo-

ni.

91

92

High walls with barbed wire surround

Zestaponi’s plant.

94

Years ago the ownership commissioned the embellishment of the façade of

the plant in the middle of the city. The work cost several thousands lari, with

scarce results.

96

Zestaponi’s trade union’s office is just in front of the factory. From there it is visible the train coming from Chiatura and bringing manganese in regular intervals of

time (above). The furniture in the office is simple. On the left, one of the room.