On March 8, International Working Women’s Day, the town square in Chiatura, Georgia, was filled with residents. Young girls handed out violets to the women, a traditional gesture of celebration. The crowd gathered, waiting for the loudspeakers to power up on a makeshift stage made from wooden boxes. A protest had been growing for days already, initially smaller and confined to the other side of the square. It began when workers realized they had not received 60 percent of February’s pay as a result of a temporary shutdown of mining operations. The company said it was because prices had been falling globally since November. People thought this was a temporary pause. But on March 7, the situation took a devastating turn.
That day, Georgia Manganese, the multinational that owns the rights to Chiatura’s manganese-rich mountains, sent a text message to workers’ phones. It told them that due to the current crisis and two years of severe financial problems, the company could no longer sustain its operations. Underground mining, the backbone of Chiatura’s economy, would be closed. The message promised that more details were forthcoming about terminated contracts and compensation. But such information never came.
Despite the gravity of the announcement, affecting 3,500 workers in this country of 3.7 million people, not a single Georgian media outlet or news channel showed up to report on the protest. No government officials appeared to address the crowd. The local mayor, though involved, offered little reassurance, saying he didn’t know much and he didn’t have much power to react.
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Auteur: Sopo Japaridze
