CiDA head leaves competition-attestation commission
By Tatia Megeneishvili
Thursday, March 12
Head of the NGO Civil Development Agency (CiDA) Zviad Devdariani has quit the competition-attestation commission created within the Tbilisi Mayor’s Office for the monitoring of the testing and interview processes for the Tbilisi municipality and local government staff.
The process was launched under the new government and aimed at removing unqualified staff from local municipalities. A special commission has been created composed of politicians and NGOs that should have monitored the process.
According to Devdariania, NGOs, which took part in the process, were not allowed to monitor the process appropriately.
“Due to a range of reasons, lack of information among them, I made a decision to leave the commission,” stated Devdariani.
The International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED) shared CiDa’s sentiment.
The organization stated that they have been observing the process of competitions in local authorities since 2014, and detected various facts where the monitoring process was restricted, using different criteria for different competitors, a lack of refined procedures and some other shortcomings that affected the fairness and transparency of the process.
Mayor of Tbilisi Davit Narmania denies the allegations.
“The competition-attestation processes were transparent and objective. However, I am sure Devdariani had reasons for taking such a step, and I plan to meet with him and discuss the details,” stated Narmania.
Meanwhile, the opposition United National Movement (UNM) stresses that the commission should be composed only of the members of the National Examination Centre and NGOs.
“400 employees who passed the exams have been fired anyway,” she said.
Fellow UNM MP Zaza Vekua stressed that the Georgian Dream wished to see only their staff in Tbilisi and in local governments.
Head of Transparency International Georgia Eka Gigauri, said that one of the main problems was that people who had high scores have not been appointed to posts.
“People who violated the law through such actions must be punished,” she stressed.
