Court Sides with Dismissed Ministry of Culture Employee

Vakhtang Baramashvili, a lawyer representing a dismissed employee of the Ministry of Culture, announced on 29 August that the Tbilisi City Court sided with the plaintiff and ordered the Ministry of Culture to compensate and reinstate them to their post.

“The court directly wrote that the decision made in the order of dismissal is illegal and that this decision was not based on the law and objective grounds,” Baramashvili emphasized during an interview with TV Pirveli on 31 August.

Baramashvili also denoted that the dismissed employee, who has chosen to remain anonymous, held a fairly high-ranking position with high qualifications and received positive evaluations over the years up until their dismissal.

Besides reinstating the plaintiff, the Ministry of Culture must compensate them for the time period from their dismissal on 1 July 2021 to the date of the ruling.

The Ministry of Culture has repeatedly come under fire since the appointment of Tea Tsulukiani as Minister of Culture, who some have said maintains a policy based on keeping loyal employees and not on actual qualifications.

In that context, she has often been accused of “persecuting” free opinion in the agencies under her authority and firing employees on “political grounds.”

Similar allegations surrounded Minister Tsulukiani during her time as the Minister of Justice when the agency was forced to pay GEL 332,172 (USD 114,943) to employees who were dismissed illegally.

Timeline of Developments:

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