Safety ‘standards’ in Georgia

Several days ago, a major fire in Tbilisi completely destroyed one of the largest and most popular trading centers.

The fire broke out at about 3-4pm overnight from January 29 to 30, and 30 fire brigades tried to put out the fire for several hours.

Up to 1,000 vendors lost their property, work places and many of them are now facing crippling debt.

Now all of them are asking and demanding that the local authorities help them or reimburse the losses.

The case once again raised question marks over safety and security measures in Georgia.

The fire service stated that fire could have been put out sooner if someone had called the emergency services earlier.

It is astounding that a building with so many employees, and one of the largest and most popular gold trade centres in Tbilisi, had no fire alarms or fire prevention systems.

The owners of the buildings must take responsibility for this extreme oversight, but those employed in the building are also responsible as they had not demanded the introduction of such systems.

Unfortunately, many Georgians think that nothing bad will happen to them until such disasters really take place, as proved by the recent publication of Georgia’s traffic collision statistics.

It is also not right to demand the compensations from the local authorities.

However, there is another issue.

The local authorities and the Government in general are also responsible, as there is no genuine mechanism in the country that would check how different companies acting in Georgia meet even minimal safety norms.

It should be mentioned here that the country badly needs efficient insurance system. Insurance companies should work more efficiently to explain to the population and businessmen in particular about the advantages of insurance system. The insurance companies should attract the population by offering genuine compensation to the businessmen as well as the farmers and ordinary citizens.

So far, the insurance companies fail to attract wide masses of population and businessmen in insuring their property or businesses.